Broken Hearts on Canvas
by ImmortalObsession
Summary: When a terrible turn of events lands 9-year old Hermione Granger in an orphanage, nothing could possibly get worse. Or at least, nothing could get worse until Hermione meets Tom Riddle, the sulky handsome boy who likes to draw and thinks she's his newest toy... AH/AU/rated M for dark themes/1930s-era
1. Chapter 1

**AN: What am I doing posting another Tomione fic? I have a problem. Seriously.**

**But _the feels..._**

**Oh, whatever. My grades can suffer. **

**So _Broken Hearts on Canvas_ is told in two parts. It's also strictly for readers who can handle Dark!Tom, abuse, and love them some lemons. It's very different, but hopefully in a good way. There is no magic. (Other than the magic of true love...) *sniggers* Anywho, thank you for reading! **

* * *

Part 1 – the Orphanage Ghoul

"_I am selfish. All artists are selfish and self-centered,"  
_- Chaim Potok, _My Name is Asher Lev_

* * *

_London, England_  
_1947 - present_

"Good night, Madame," calls Hermione, wrapping a scarf about her neck and zipping up. Behind her, Madame Pomfrey begins to shut down the shop.

"_Oui, oui. _Good night, Errrmeeahne," the woman returns, in a thick French accent that mangles her name into a thing of rolling 'r's and horror. "_Re_member, ve are opening e_ar_ly tom_orr_ow!"

"Got it." Hermione says _adieu _and ducks out of the dress shop, glad to be away from the overpowering stench of floral perfume and the very finest of London's stuck-up English prunes. For some reason, all those snooty customers seem to think she has the fashionable brains of Chanel - all because she has a snazzy-looking nametag and stylish uniform - when in actuality, she couldn't fill the tip of a thimble with vocabulary that is even remotely vogue.

She tries to explain this to customers time and time again: _I just work here, _but they never listen.

The tragically large amount of brain cells deleted by their nose-hair-murdering perfumes and all those fashion magazines must be the cause of their short-term deafness, surely.

Surely?

Hermione consoles herself with the encouraging thought that soon she will have scraped up enough money to finally go to school, to make something of herself and get a real job. To be her own boss.

Surely.

Surely?

Outside on the damp street, she shivers when a fiercely cold wind roars by, tightens her scarf, and flings an arm up in the air to catch a cab. She has to get back to the Dursleys, the family of three she most unfortunately bunks with due to the fact she can't afford her own apartment, and Petunia Dursley is going to pass a gallstone if she shows up late again.

_God forbid the neighbors know about the bookworm living in their spare bedroom, _Hermione thinks, snorting under her breath. The Dursleys are unbelievably preoccupied with appearances. She is going to have them diagnosed for OCD by a therapist tomorrow morning.

For a short moment as she defrosts inside the backseat of the cab, Hermione fondly recalls the red-headed family she worked for when she was nine. She remembers Ron (she'd had a horrible crush on him when they first hired her, hadn't she?), Fred and George (she tattled on them for their pranks incessantly), Charlie (who had a kind of geeky fascination with dragons), and sweet newborn Ginny with the cutest tuft of carroty hair on her head. She wonders what ever happened to her dear Weasleys…

Suddenly, her pleasant memories are rudely interrupted – as they always are – and a cold chill flushes down Hermione's spine, making her close her eyes and clench her fists against the panic that suddenly rises in a sickening, claustrophobic wave that taunts every one of her senses. That threatens to eat her whole.

It is brought on by no one other than _him._

The boy who turned her childhood into a never-ending nightmare, who broke every promise and spins more lies than there are numbers, who looks like an angel but has the mental complex of a contemporary Lucifer. Even now, after six years, the slippery snake has a way of sneaking into her every thought just as he did when they were children.

He is the Devil reincarnated.

He'd been her world for six years.

He is, naturally, Tom Riddle.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1936 – eleven years earlier_

"Here you are, luv," says Mrs. Weasley, a kind smile on her freckly face as she bends down toward Hermione. "Put that in your pocket and make sure no one sees it. I don't want any of those crooks getting your pay – you worked hard for it."

"Thanks, Mrs. Weasley." Hermione puts the two shillings deep inside her satchel and waves to the Weasley family. All six of them are bundled in their homey flat two sizes too small just inside the threshold she now stands on. Five red-headed children shout out their returning goodbyes – Mr. Weasley, who is off in the factory where he works part-time and builds parts for ships, already said his parting an hour past – and Mrs. Weasley, rosy-cheeked and kindly stern as a Mary Poppins, hustles Hermione away, warning her to get going before it got dark.

The door to the Weasley's apartment snaps shut, bolts clunking with the turn of the lock. Mrs. Weasley's delicious meal fills Hermione's stomach pleasantly and she sighs, turning on her heel and starting down the narrow, steep stairs to the first floor.

Sometimes, she wishes that she was one of the Weasley children. They are always so cheery, as if they don't have a care in the world. Not a care for their financial situation. Not a care for the Great Depression that had swept over all of England like a flash flood, along with other heavy burdens of a world war.

Hermione doesn't have the luxury of being careless though.

_Still, things are getting better, _she reminds herself._ I'm making money for all of us. _At this thought, an enormous sense of pride fills the small space in her body unoccupied by Mrs. Weasley's hearty supper, and she lifts her chin a little higher as she marches down the rainy street. Yes, _she_ is the supporter now. It is _she _who keeps her family running, who prevents the Grangers from slinking down into a slump impossible to dig out of.

It wasn't always this way though.

Just last year, she was going to an all-girls charter school, with supplied uniforms, a tidy little courtyard that had a cherry-red swing, and more books than she could count in the second-floor library. She'd started going there when she turned five and excelled quickly, skipping first and second grade with her impressive reading skills, then shooting right up to third before entering her fourth year at the age of seven. Her parents had been very proud.

And much more sorry to make her leave.

But their lives at home had become unmanageable – destitute even – and Mum and Papa were desperate after their family dentistry went out of business. Hermione had asked why they went out of business. Mum said people didn't have enough money to buy bread these days, much less enough to go to a pricey dentist to have their teeth checked. Papa said people didn't worry about cavities anymore; they worried about terrorists and Jews and Hitler.

When Mum and Papa couldn't find any new jobs, they enrolled for unemployment. The first check from the government, or _the dole _as Papa calls it, came days before the rent was due. It wasn't enough. Mum cried that night. Papa cried too, outside their one-bedroom flat long after midnight when he thought they'd all gone to bed. But Hermione saw.

Within the next week, she was pulled out of school to work.

Mum apologized to Hermione every day for months, saying she knew how much her baby girl loved to learn and that they'd get it all back one day so Papa could have his patients and she could have her education again – but after another six months without success of either, the apologies became less frequent, the promises less likely to follow through – until they dwindled down to nothing but starry dreams.

Papa comes home late most of the time now. What exactly he does out and about in London, they don't know. Mum would ask before, but Papa gets angry and yells at her when she does. Hermione had never heard her Papa – her sweet, tactile Papa – raise his voice before that.

Mum and Papa hardly ever talk anymore.

That's why Hermione has to work, why she has to make money, to put food on the table. Because she is the last string holding her broken family together.

Every morning except for Sundays, she wakes up at six AM and walks halfway across London to the little apartment building the Weasleys live in, and she cleans and scrubs the Weasleys' homey flat until every available surface shines like the top of the Chrysler building. Or so Charlie, the second-oldest of the Weasleys, who visits on holidays and lives in New York as a freelance journalist, had once said when he came over one Christmas and saw the waxed hardwood floors. Charlie wants to be a writer and make fantasy fiction about dragons. Hermione thinks his career choice intriguing.

Hermione doesn't know she has just seen her beloved Weasleys for the very last time.

"Mum, I'm back," she shouts, stepping into their flat and dumping her satchel on the floor. Her skin's sticky with sweat and drizzle from the long walk over. She retrieves the two shillings and fists them, hiding both hands behind her back and creeping forward.

"Muuuummm." She listens for a response, but doesn't get any. "Mum! Where are you?"

"In here, baby" comes the tired reply. Mum's voice travels out of the bedroom they all share and Hermione moves toward it, past the four-foot wide kitchen, tiny bath, and the radio and armchair serving as their living room. Her incredible hair cast a wobbly shadow.

"Mum, look what I've got," Hermione says excitedly, unraveling her hands into the open. But her mother does not turn from where she half-bends out the window, smoking a cigarette. The woman's gaunt body, which has shrunk two sizes in the past year, looks skeletal from this angle.

"I made two shillings," she continues, not one to be discouraged easily. "I found a penny on the way here and bought us half a loaf of rye. It's in my satchel now-"

"Baby." Mum is crying. "Baby, baby."

Hermione stops babbling and frowns at the back of her mother's head, swathed in a cloud of toxic smoke and failed dreams. "Yeah?" she asks.

"Oh baby," her mother continues to murmur, sounding dizzy. She moans softly. "Baby, baby…"

Hermione chews her thumbnail, a bad habit no one has yet to reprimand her for, and eyes her mother. "Mum?"

At the familiar call, the gaunt woman finally turns around, tossing the finished cigarette out of the half-open window behind her and tugging down the Venetian blind. It only comes down partway and hangs at a crooked angle. Grey evening light slashes into the bedroom in strips. The other half of the room, the side her mother stands on, is plunged into murky darkness.

Something shiny glints in Mum's hand.

"Baby, please don't give me that look," she says, tightening her grip on the pliers and blinking back tears. "I don't want to do this – you know that – but we need the money."

Hermione stares at her.

"Come here, baby." She waves her over with hands once soft and ripe with flesh, that once tucked back frizzy wisps behind Hermione's ears and caught the chocolate ice cream dribbling down her chin when she ate too fast. They look like spiders with bones for legs now.

"Baby." Mum's brow furrows with confusion. Hermione always listens to her. She's a good daughter. Never disobedient. "Come on now."

"Where's Papa?" Hermione whispers.

Mum's expression closes. It shuts down, a shoe shop gone out of business; it darkens, a storm building up thunder; it shivers, just as glass does seconds before it shatters into a thousand itty bitty pieces. "Papa left," she says flatly.

"Left? For how long-?"

"I don't know." Her mother is agitated and tears at her hair with one hand, dangerously whipping around the pliers with the other. "Forever, I suppose. We haven't seen him in days, so he could be at the bottom of the Seine for all I know, couldn't he?"

Hermione begins to cry.

At the sight, Mum's face softens like warm bread dough. "Oh baby, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…" She sighs. "There's just not enough money. Not for everything we need. But if I could just-" She stops, then starts again. "Look, I'll make it quick. They're baby teeth, so they'll grow back. All I need is two molars. One is worth four pounds, you know. That could get us food for a few weeks, and then the other could pay for Mummy's special sugar. You know how much I love my special sugar, baby…"

Hermione's stiff with fear and her tears stop running now. She stands frozen while the shell of her mother croons and tries to calm her, her bony spider hands shaking from withdrawal and brown eyes eerily vacant. Hermione knows what she has to do then.

Mum knows too, a mere second before she does it.

"Don't you run, Hermione Jean Granger," she warns, lifting the pliers and coming forward slowly. Hermione tenses. "Don't you dare-"

"_Hermione!"_

The scream chases her out the flat, overwhelming the sound of the two shillings Hermione left on the bedroom floor, of the pliers sticking headfirst into the plaster wall exactly where her head was a second ago, of her footsteps rushing and tripping and fumbling down the stairs, of her falling down the last flight and ripping open a gash on her palm when it caught on a loose nail.

It chases her all the way to the inner city, where she finally stops running and catches her breath on the edge of an alley, gasping. She looks up at the sky through a messy explosion of matted brown hair.

It's jet-black.

London is a dangerous place at night, Hermione knows, and it doesn't help any that she's bleeding. She'll be helpless if one of those disturbed gents she's heard about tries to snatch her, and it gets real cold after eight o' clock in the fall. She needs somewhere to go. She needs help. She needs-

She needs Mum.

And she's crying again, in the way that only a child can cry. She cries with wild abandon and no care for anyone or anything else, with absolute misery, with gasps for air and hiccups when she eats up her tears and a huge wail just when she almost stops, burying her face in her sleeves and snotting all over them.

Just then, from a nearby café emerges a retired policeman by the name of Moody. His beer belly is warm with drink, his mind sharp and vigilant as ever. The sound of crying startles him and he looks around, his eyes – or should we say, one good eye – landing on a little girl with terrible hair crouched in an alleyway. He scowls and marches over.

"What are you doing out here alone, eh?" a gruff voice demands, startling Hermione out of the depths of self-pity and enticing her to look up. Her eyes goes wide.

The man before her is large and portly, with a jagged scar webbing across his cheek, scruffy blondish hair, a bowler hat, and a most intriguing glass eye. He wears a black trench coat as well and, rather interestingly, the jacket would have looked extremely suspicious on any other person, but it only made this particular man seem imposing and curiously mysterious.

"Well?" the man barks. "What are you doing out here? It's past curfew for you, innit?"

"I…I'm alone," she finally says. "I haven't got anywhere to go."

"No? Well, what about your parents?" the man says shrewdly.

"Haven't got any." Hermione doesn't usually lie, but she knows that if she tells the man about her mother he'll take her back no matter how hard she pleads otherwise, and she can't go back home. She remembers the pliers with a shudder.

"Well damn." The man sets his hands on his hips and growls in thought, looking around and scowling some more. "Well then, maybe you can go to…nah, can't do that…what about…? No, no, he moved out to Tyneside…and then there's…meh, perhaps not…maybe…_maybe…_Nah…never, not in a million years…well, there _is _that one…meh… Blast." He smacks his meaty hands together, matter-of-factly. "Yep, that oughta do it."

"What oughta do what?" Hermione inquires. Curiosity invested in the man's strange way of talking makes her forget her earlier troubles.

"Mrs. Cole oughta take you in, little missy, that's what oughta what," the man says sharply. "Now stand up, we've got places to go – well, one place anyway – and that woman owes me a favor. Yep, she'll take you in. Sure. No problem. That oughta do it." He starts to stride off, limping slightly due to what Hermione now notices is a right wooden leg. She hurries after him.

"Who is 'Mrs. Cole'?" she says, after they even their pace and cross the busy street. The man growls in annoyance.

"Mrs. Cole," he grumbles. "She is going to be your matron. She runs one of the orphanages here. It's a fine place, and you'll be lucky should she take you in."

Hermione nods, although she is taken off guard by this new bit of information. _Orphanage? _she thinks and hesitates in the middle of the crossing, without the man in the bowler hat noticing at all. She stares after his flapping black trench coat, ignoring the honks of cabs and their angry drivers screeching at her. She wonders if she should run now, back to her mother. Before it's too late.

_It's been too late for months now, _the voice of reason reminds her. _Papa isn't ever coming back and Mum's been gone for a long, long time. Where else can you go?_

The man in the bowler hat, who has seemed to finally realize she isn't following, turns back. "Hey! You coming or not, eh?"

"Coming." The answer is immediate, said in a whisper too quiet to hear in the city. Louder, she says, "Coming!" And then she sprints to catch up.

* * *

Hermione's first morning at an orphanage is an unpleasant one.

When she wakes up in her own bed (which is shabby, but very clean, just like the rest of the orphanage) and looks around to see a greyish, sad-looking room, she's bewildered. What is she doing here? Where _is _here? How did she get there? Where are Mum and Papa? Then she's petrified. _Something's happened. Something really, truly terrible happened, didn't it?_

But then the confusing remnants of dreams slithers away from her conscience and she realizes exactly where she is. And how she got there. And why she's there. And the really, truly terrible happening.

Mum and Papa are gone.

The man in the bowler hat – Moody, as it had been revealed when they arrived at the orphanage late last night and a woman (apparently Mrs. Cole) fondly called him this – found her after she ran away and brought her here. To an orphanage. To _the _orphanage she would now be growing up in.

She buries her face in the thin, limp pillow under her and cries.

Mrs. Cole, later on, finds her like this, and an understanding look comes over the woman's face - replacing the anxiety that usually flurries there like a skittish fleet of mice – and she soothes Hermione, coaxing her to go down to the eating hall and meet the other children. She says it isn't all bad. She says Hermione can make friends here and maybe even get a new home, with loving parents and a dog or two.

Despite everything, this calms Hermione. Even though she doesn't like the idea of having a new family.

After Hermione changes into 'uniform,' she follows Mrs. Cole out of her new room and into a spotless but obviously ancient hallway. It has black-and-white tiles for floors and a few children with morning duties scrubbing corners, soapy sponge and bucket in-hand. Mrs. Cole nods approvingly as they pass the children, who stare curiously after her and laugh when they see her bushy hair. Hermione flushes, embarrassed.

_I don't think I'll like it here very much, _she can't help thinking as they pass through more of the quaint building. Most of the interior is gray and washed out, impeccably clean and mismatching in furniture, and Mrs. Cole keeps up a comforting stream of blabber as they go down to what the matron calls 'the eating hall.' Hermione's attention is only distracted away from the setting of her new home by a few choice words, like _not many toys _and _a lovely little beach we go to once a year. Oh, you'll love it, dear – _and especially, _the __library._

"Library?" she says, straightening. "You have a library?"

"Oh, well, sort of." Mrs. Cole shrugs. "It's more of a relaxing room, really. It's got a few comfy chairs and some picture books there. You like to read, dear?"

Hermione nods. She'd have to investigate this so-called library later.

"Here we are," Mrs. Cole says, stopping them inside the eating hall, which is actually a large square room with greyish walls and two tall windows on each side of the back one. About six or so long tables jam-packed with children varying in all ages, a main buffet table where everyone apparently loads up their plates, and a good sixty kids wait for her.

Hermione gulps.

"You'll fit in just fine," Mrs. Cole assures, patting Hermione on the head and irritating the little girl by doing so. The matron nudges her forward. "Go on, take a plate and pick a seat. I'll see you later." And she walks off, folding her hands behind her back like a drill sergeant and calling over an aproned helper for assistance. The doors swing shut behind her and Hermione is on her own.

She steels herself and goes over to the buffet table, selecting food slowly so she can take in more of the children inside the cafeteria. They all seem generally happy, yet there is an underlying glumness to their laughter and shouts. But of course, no matter how clean the orphanage they live in is, she reflects, it is undeniably a rather glum place to grow up in.

She bites the nail of her thumb, contemplating, and eventually wanders over to a table.

Its inhabitants notice her immediately.

"Who're you?" says one boy, sizing her up with blue-grey eyes and peering at her large hair.

"Hermione Granger," she answers timidly.

"Your hair looks like the wrong end of a broomstick." He grins nastily and his friends laugh, putting in more unkind comments until Hermione goes red in the face and stands back up, grabbing her plate and moving further down the table, to sit by a girl with mousy blonde hair.

The boys laugh harder.

The blonde girl looks up, glances at Hermione (then her hair, naturally), and finally at the snickering dolts. Her mouth screws up so it looks like she's bit into a moldy lemon. "Who're you?" she asks.

Hermione sighs. "I'm Hermione Granger."

"I've nevah heard o' that name before."

_Well, now you have, _Hermione can't help thinking rather rudely. But she doesn't let her feelings show. "What's your name?" she says instead, trying to be nice.

"Martha." Martha shoots another distasteful look at the boys down the table, muttering, "Those rats are Billy Stubbs, Eric Whalley, Sean O'Sullivan, and Peter Kowsakowski."

"Oooh," Hermione says, catching Martha's tone. "So I should stay clear of them?"

"'Them'?" Martha says, surprised. She shakes her head vigorously. "Nah, they're harmless. Stupid, yeah, but harmless." Her eyes narrow into slits and she looks around Hermione, at something behind her. "Who you should really stay away from isTom Riddle."

Tom Riddle? Hermione turns, craning her neck to try and see who Martha is glaring so intensely at. "Which one?" she says, scanning the vast sea of faces without success.

"The…uh…sort of good-looking one," Martha mumbles quickly. Angrily, she adds, "But if you tell anyone I said that, I'll pop you so hard you'll 'ave a black eye, Hermione!"

Hermione blinks. "Er, alright." She peers through the crowd again and after a minute Martha sighs, sticking out a finger in emphasis.

"What are you, blind? _He's right there_."

"I'm not blind-" Hermione starts to say waspishly, but her retort falls short at the sight of an extremely handsome boy sitting across the room, at his very own table with a finished plate of food and a napkin neatly spread across his lap.

"_That's _Tom Riddle," says Martha, satisfied.

Hermione isn't paying any attention to her, however. For some mysterious reason, she is transfixed by the boy. He's all alone. He has dark hair and, from what she can tell, dark eyes too. He's rather serious also, but doesn't look much older than the rest of them, and he currently scribbles something into an open notebook, glancing intently between it and the cup in front of him. Whatever he's up to seems to be very important.

_What's he writing?_ Hermione wonders, chewing her thumbnail in thought. She wants very much to ask him.

"How old is he?" she says, turning away and finally starting on her own meal. The cereal she had poured out is soggy now. She eats it anyway. "Tom Riddle, I mean."

"Ten." Martha takes a chomp of a greasy bacon strip. Hermione notes that Tom Riddle is one year her senior. "He's lived in the orphanage his whole life though. He was born here." She reveals this in an ominous and knowing way, as if telling a well-known ghost story that never fails to induce goosebumps and spooked shudders no matter how many times it's been told.

"So what's the big deal?" Hermione says, pressing. "I mean, you don't seem to like him much."

Martha snorts. "No one does. I mean-" She sweeps a glance around them, one that surprises Hermione. The look in and of itself is surprising due to its contents: dislike and, oddly enough… apprehension. "He's a little funny – and I don't mean the good kind. Riddle does some…some scary stuff."

Scary stuff? Hermione leans forward, fascinated. "What kind of scary stuff?"

"Just stuff." Martha fidgets. Swats at a scavenging fly. "He makes bad things happen, so we just leave him alone. He likes to be alone anyway."

Hermione frowns. Who would like being alone? She hates being alone. Then there's no one to tell all the facts she knows to, to ask questions, to read with or laugh with or be smiled at by…

She finds herself thinking of Mum and Papa.

She and Martha don't talk again for the rest of breakfast.

* * *

It is seven-thirty at night when Hermione can finally go to the library.

She had been very busy today, spending most of her time with Mrs. Cole and touring the orphanage some more. The matron told her about the orphanage's practices, weekly trips to the chapel for worship, and all the rules. Mrs. Cole said she was to get a chores list soon, but that it could wait until she settled in some more. Hermione didn't mind. She was used to cleaning.

Right before supper, Mrs. Cole had delivered her to the eating hall again (although the orphanage is so small Hermione is sure she could've found it on her own), and she'd asked her if there was anything else she'd like to know. Hermione said she wanted to know how to go to the library.

Once she had the directions down, Hermione marched off into the eating hall and ate supper with Martha, although they didn't talk and Martha's obnoxious chewing bugged the living daylights out of her. But it was better than sitting with Billy Stubbs and all the other stupid-harmless-dolts.

Now, Hermione holds her breath and slowly pushes open the door to the library, which whinnies under her touch and groans like an old timer. Peeking her head inside, she is severely disappointed.

Mrs. Cole is right.

The library is nothing more than a tiny room, just like all the other boring grey rooms of the orphanage, with a few rows of shelves and some raggedy, outdated armchairs. It is nothing like the one from her old charter school, which is bigger than the eating hall and filled with more books than King Edward VIII has pounds.

_Still, it's something, _she reminds herself.

With this uplifting (sort of) thought in mind, Hermione dives into the shelves.

About twenty minutes later, the-creaky-old-timer door gives a groan, and Hermione nearly drops _Great Expectations _in her fright. She catches it barely though and darts behind the very end of the row into hiding. Squinting over the top of the book cover, through yellowing pages and squelched eyelashes, she sees a boy walk inside her newfound safe haven.

Looking closer, she sees the boy is no less than the orphanage's personal ghoul.

It's Tom Riddle.

* * *

**AN: I wish Tom Riddle went to _my _orphanage. (Not that I live in an orphanage, but...)**

**Hem. **

**Thanks for reading and please review! I'd love to hear your thoughts. :)**

**Kisses,  
ImmortalObsession**


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Salutations, peeps. *attempts gang sign* Thank you for the reviews and encouragement; your comments make me smile all derp-like. 8~) **

* * *

_London, England_  
_1936_

Tom Riddle, as it turns out, isn't in the library for books.

Knowing fully well that she is spying, Hermione doesn't dare make a sound while the strange handsome boy gets comfortable. He sits down in a lumpy blue armchair, taking out a notebook from under his arm (she sees now that the notebook is actually a sketchbook), and digging around in the pockets of the customary grey tunic all the children wear. The same tunic she wears now, she reminds herself.

Tom Riddle takes out three pencils and a pencil sharpener.

Laying them down carefully on the low, pock-marked coffee table before him, he selects one and looks around the room – he's searching for something, although she doesn't know what – and after a minute, gets up. Hermione tenses and tries to make herself smaller where she hides behind the bookshelf. However, all the boy does is grab a book at random, drop it on the table, and resume his seat. Then he puts a pencil to the sketchbook and starts to...draw.

For two hours straight.

Hermione stays with Tom Riddle the entire time. Or, at least, she hides behind the bookshelf and worms down to the floor, where she reopens _Great Expectations _and continues her reading.

She thinks Pip, the main character, is most irritating.

Midway through the enormous book, she glances up to see Tom Riddle still drawing. He hasn't moved except to sharpen the pencil from time to time or chew on his eraser. He makes a face when he does it (he probably didn't like the rubbery taste, she reflects), but he doesn't take his mouth off even so. Hermione wants to ask him why.

She wants to see his picture, too.

Thinking about it now, she realizes she isn't all that sure of the reasons behind her curiosity of Tom Riddle. Curiosity, for her, has simply always been there. Naturally, it hides when she is bored, and it springs out of her subconscious when something piques her interest, to make her think hard and pester her thoughts until she can take it no longer and simply bursts like an overripe grape.

But she doesn't know why curiosity is pestering her _so much _over Tom Riddle. She just knows she's got to get rid of it.

Hermione shuts _Great Expectations, _decided, and hops out of the dusty stacks.

"Hello!" she cries, lifting her chin and embracing the full enormousness of her hair by striking what she hopes is an impressive pose. Hopefully, it will scare the ghoul Tom Riddle.

At the interruption, Tom Riddle's head snaps up and he jumps like a cat, nearly ripping a line of lead straight across his drawing. He just barely catches the pencil at the last moment, with deft fingers and a dark glare sent her way.

He's definitely not scared.

Then, he says the same thing everyone else had – except slightly differently:

"Who're _you_?"

The difference between _him _and _them, _Hermione reflects, is that there is a sharp command in this boy's voice, one that cannot be reckoned with and makes her lose the faux bravery she's mustered in mere seconds. She flushes. "I'm…I'm Hermione Granger," she says, lamely.

He sneers, meanly. "Go away, Hermione Granger." And he huddles into the lumpy blue armchair again, eyes snapping between the cup and his sketchbook – and then her, too, when she doesn't budge.

"I said go away," Tom Riddle hisses. "I don't want you here."

Hermione frowns. _Nobody else wants me here either, so it seems, _she thinks hopelessly.

Tom Riddle huffs at her, looking extremely irked. "Would you get out already? You're breaking my concentration."

"Concentration?" Hermione pipes. Her eyes light up. "Concentration of what?"

"Drawing," he mutters sullenly.

"Oh, can I see then?"

_Please, please let me see._

"No," he barks.

She scowls. "I can see why the other kids don't like you."

He glares at her balefully.

"What? I'm just telling you the truth." She tucks her Dickens' novel under her arm, the way he did with that sketchbook, and goes over, looping around the back of the armchair and valiantly sneaking a peek at Tom Riddle's picture before he can throw his scrawny arms over it.

"That's not fair!" he yells, while she smiles hugely in a smug, victorious way. "It's not finished, you idiot."

"It's quite good though," she says. The drawing – or what she's seen of it in the short two seconds it passed her eyes – is…astonishingly _realistic._ Realistic is the best adjective she can think of for it anyway. "Do you draw a lot?"

"Yes." Tom Riddle hesitates, staring at her cautiously. "You really think it's good?" he says seriously.

She shrugs. "Yeah."

Tom Riddle smirks, satisfied, and seems to see her in a new light suddenly. She is startled by the change his cherubic features undergo when he is no longer sulky – he really is a handsome boy. "So you just got here?" he says, chewing the end of the pencil and making a displeased face.

"Yes." Hermione deflates a little at the reminder. "Just got here."

He nods and stands up, putting his measly art supplies back in his pockets and leaving the mess of curly pencil shavings for someone else to clean. He wedges his sketchbook under his arm again.

"I'm Tom," he says with great importance, holding out a pale hand.

Hermione beams. _I knew those kids were wrong about him, _she thinks, although this isn't really very true, and clasps his hand. A strange look comes over his face when she does. "Hi Tom," she says pleasantly. "I'm Hermione."

Tom stares at their interlocked hands, then his dark eyes slowly lift to hers, pausing on her grin. Martha's warning words come rushing back to her suddenly: _He's a little funny – and I don't mean the good kind…_ _He makes bad things happen._

Her smile falters, then falls away completely, until Tom is just staring at her and she is just nervously staring at his nose so she doesn't have to really look back. She would bite her nails if he wasn't still holding onto her.

Then he finally does something.

"Do I know you?" he asks, and he twirls his long faery fingers through hers, tightening them like shoelaces. She blinks.

"Um, no." It sounds like a question. "Or at least," she adds, "I don't think so."

"Oh." Tom frowns. "I just thought maybe…" he trails, then shakes himself. "Well, I'll take you back to your room, Hermione." He smiles in a shockingly charming way. Hermione finds herself blushing. "And then I can save you a seat in the eating hall," he says. "We'll have breakfast together."

"Oh, er, alright." She's both pleased to have made a friend and surprised by Tom's forwardness. "I think I'm on the second floor."

"Third," Tom corrects. "Boys sleep on the second floor."

She nods. "Right."

Tom stares at her for another moment, then increases the strength of his hold on her hand in a way that makes Hermione blush again. He leads them out of the library.

They hold hands long after that.

* * *

Mrs. Cole, whose concern has always been highly preoccupied by one isolated charge of hers in particular, finds herself highly relieved. For in the duration of the past month, Tom Riddle – that one particularly worrying charge – has seemed to have undergone a great change of some sort, and it is all thanks to the very sweet girl Hermione Granger.

Tom has been glued to the girl's side since she first arrived at the orphanage six weeks ago, and he always plays the part of her perfect gentleman. He helps her make a plate at meals and puts napkins on her lap. He sits next to her in the chapel on Sundays and shares his copy of the Bible with her. He walks her to her room (and well, everywhere), and whenever the two are seen, they're holding hands and whispering to each other. The whispering worries Mrs. Cole, but she is sure the little pair will eventually grow out of it.

The truth of this dynamic is a bit different, however.

"Tom, where are we going?" Hermione asks, as Tom drags them away from the assembling children and back upstairs. She recognizes the route quickly and realizes they're headed toward Mrs. Cole's office. "Tom! We're going to miss the orientation-"

"No, we're not," he says, in his usual self-assured way. Tom never has a worry in the world. "Only you are."

"Why?" she says, bewildered, but has to wait for an answer when they grind to a halt.

In front of the boiler room.

"Because you're going to wait for me in here," Tom explains in a secretive, excited whisper that clearly indicates he's been thinking over this plan for quite some time. "I'll go downstairs with everyone else and while the parents are here looking, you can hide up here."

"But I don't want to hide," she says.

Tom's smile falters, quickly transforming into a heavy scowl. Hermione steps back at the arrival of his temper, which she's speedily learned is shorter than a burnt fuse, but Tom won't let go of her hand.

He never lets go.

"Well, you're going to," he says, furiously. "I planned all this out. You can't just not do it-"

"Of course I can," retorts Hermione hotly. "Besides, I want to meet the parents."

He stares at her.

"What?" she says. She's nervous.

"You…" He closes his eyes, pausing. Then his dark eyes slowly open and bore into hers. Hermione tries to look away, but somehow can't – Tom Riddle's eyes have an uncanny way of never letting her go. _Magic, _a part of her whispers, but her brain knows those things don't exist. Tom is simply magnetic when he widens his eyes like that, like he's a beatific angel dropped straight out of heaven.

Or a pretty-eyed demon from hell.

"You actually _want _one of those rich snobs to adopt you, Hermione?" he whispers incredulously.

"They're not snobs."

"Sure they're not. They just all think they're better than us and come here to get our hopes up, to laugh at us because we haven't got any family or money, and then leave."

"But…but I thought they might want some of us," Hermione says in a small voice, hurt and astonished.

"That's what all the new kids think." Tom's eyes soften at her disappointment and he squeezes her hand, reassuringly. "I'm the only friend you've got, Hermione, remember? And since I've been here so long, I know how these things go. Trust me," he says. "You don't want to go down there."

She bites her lip – he'd told her the third day they started being friends that when she bit her nails it irritated him, so this was the new and improved version of the habit – and nods slowly. "Alright. I… I'll stay up here, I guess?"

"Great." He kisses her on the cheek, opens the door to the boiler room up, and shoves her inside. It's dark and cramped. Musty-smelling. "I'll be back in a few hours," he promises, and shuts the door and locks it from the outside.

Hermione shivers. It's scary in here and there aren't any light switches. She sits down on the chilly floor, leans back against the boiler, and tries not to think about the ominous wails coming from the pipes for the next two and a half hours.

She hopes Tom comes back soon.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1947 – present_

"Errrmeeahne, get ze new orde_rrr_ of bonnets pour Miss Black!"

Hermione looks up from her sandwich with a long-suffering sigh. This is supposed to be her lunch break. Not pretend-to-be-Madame-Pomfrey's-lapdog-while-being- paid-minimum-wage break.

"_ERRRMEEAHNE!"_

Or maybe it is pretend-to-be-Madame-Pomfrey's-lapdog-while-being- paid-minimum-wage break? Hermione jumps up, crams the rest of her ham-and-cheese in her mouth, ties on a stylishly-cut apron, and jets out of the backroom. The sleek seamstress shop she walks into is a myriad of feather boas, thread spools, and snobby older women dressed like teenagers. She offers polite, helpful smiles and shimmies through the clothes racks, to the other side of the store where the storage closet is.

She hates the storage closet.

It's cold, stuffy, and dark even when she turns on the overhanging light. She despises all closets. They remind her too much of…_him._

Hermione shakes off chills, steps inside the dim space, and grabs a cardboard box off the highest shelves. She's back outside in the comforting busyness of the shop in seconds. She locks the door with a smart click of keys, heaves the incredibly heavy box of fancy hats onto her hip, and doubles speed when Madame Pomfrey screeches for her again. She hates closets.

She hates her job even more.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1936_

Tom draws everything.

Hermione likes to watch him draw. It's quite a gift, she thinks, to be able to create something out of nothing, and Tom's skill never fails to amaze.

But Tom is arrogant.

Although he hides this trait from everyone else but her, you can see his swollen ego if you just look for it. For instance, Tom always smirks when she oohs and awes at his pictures, straightening up a little like the gents they see walking around London when they go to chapel for Sunday service. He soaks up her compliments like a sponge. He knows exactly how lovely he is and how to use his angel eyes to get his way.

And he uses his angel eyes often.

After a while though, Hermione grows accustomed to Tom's talent and simply sits next to him reading while he draws into his sketchbook. He has about twenty-one of them in his room, hidden in his wardrobe under a flappy board. He won't tell her how he got the sketchbooks, but they're always brand-new in the beginning.

He lets her look through all of them. But only when he's finished.

That day, Mrs. Cole takes the children to the park for a healthy spot of fresh air. Tom draws the fountain and the trees and a sister and brother having a picnic and an old woman crying on the bench nearby. His pictures look like photographs. He still makes a displeased face when he chews the end of his pencil.

Hermione trails her fingers through the fountain water from where they sit on the stone ledge. She's already finished her book, but Tom is still drawing.

The onyx bottom of the fountain is covered in a shiny, rippling sheet of pennies and fat goldfish that blink at her blearily. Billy, Eric, Sean, and Peter are scooping the dripping wishes into their pockets while Mrs. Cole's head is turned.

Hermione shakes her head, turning away, and twists over to get a peek at Tom's newest sketch – but instead, she plops right into the fountain with a grand _SPLASH!_

Tom whips around, stunned to see her floundering and sputtering in the water, and Billy Stubbs and his cronies laugh themselves silly at the sight of Broomhead Hermione Granger bottom-down in the fountain. Shocked, amused giggles from other spectators add to Hermione's humiliation when she stands up and the back of her soppy grey skirt is wet _just so _it looks like she's had an… an accident.

Even Tom cracks a smile.

Quickly, Hermione grabs the stone boot of the heroic-looking gentleman centered in the fountain and uses it to haul herself out, stumbling and quivering with suppressed tears. She stubs her toe on the siding as she takes off running, leaving puddles and wet footprints in her tracks. Laughter follows her and Mrs. Cole gives a gasp of surprise when she sees Hermione rip past, with such speed that the brim of the matron's sunhat starts in a flutter.

Hermione finally arrives in the safety of a meadow. She collapses against a weeping willow, hiding her face in her knees and sobbing. She hates the boys for laughing at her. And Tom! How could he think it was_ funny_? She thought he was supposed to be her friend, to be on her side, to help her out of the fountain or… or… or _something_.

"Hermione?" the boy himself shouts out, from somewhere far away.

Hermione doesn't want Tom to find her. She hides her face in her uniform's grey sweater sleeves and huddles up at the base of the willow tree, sniffling.

The sounds of footsteps refill her with dread all over again.

Tom always finds her.

"Hermione?" he stage-whispers, still chuckling, and creeps over when he spots her. She hears the grass crunch under his feet. "What's wrong?" Tom says, tugging one of the hands free from where they clench her elbows and twisting it with his. He puts his chin on her knee when she doesn't say anything and she peeks a glance at him, but then regrets it immediately.

He has his angel eyes on.

"What is it?" he says, tracing the frown on her mouth with a curious finger – as if he's trying to draw the multiple contours on her lips by pure touch. "Tell me, Hermione." The command in his voice is so effective she starts to answer without meaning to.

"You all laughed at me," she mumbles, pulling her face away from Tom's hand and scowling. Tom immediately slips his nimble body through the two tree roots she sits between, slumping down against the tree trunk and putting his fingers back on her face. She's so mad his touch feels like boiling-hot oil.

"Why didn't you help me get out?" she demands. "And would you quit doing that?"

"I didn't laugh," Tom says in his quiet, serious tenor. "And I'm mad too, you know. They shouldn't have laughed at you."

She tears up some blades of grass viciously.

"I promise I'll make them pay." His hand drops from her face to crumble up a dead leaf sitting by them, squashing it and opening his palm to reveal papery crumbs he pours over her grassy shrine. "Billy and Eric and all the rest of those dolts."

Hermione bites the inside of her lip. She doesn't like the way Tom says _I'll make them pay. _It makes her nervous. "I don't want to get anyone in trouble," she says warily.

Tom shrugs. "I'm going to do it anyway."

A knot of squeamishness coils in Hermione's belly and she looks at Tom, worried. He's smiling though. He's smiling a smile that reminds her immediately of Peter Pan, of a faery boy who does nothing but make mischief and play with pirate swords.

Tom is nothing like Peter Pan though.

* * *

They're in chapel, wearing their Sunday-best, when it happens.

Hermione is following Reverend Richard's sermon obediently, reading along to the lines of the Bible and voicing them when Reverend Richard bids them to. Tom sits beside her, as he always does, holding the open holy book between them in one hand and holding her knee with the other. His eyes aren't on the holy text though, where they usually go so he can pretend to read with everyone else and mouth the verses.

No, they're watching Billy Stubbs today.

Hermione only turns away from the reading when Tom's hand unconsciously tightens on her leg, distracting her. She looks up at him, about to ask what it is he wants, but stops when she sees he's watching someone. She looks over to see who.

She bites her lip, because she remembers Tom's promise to… _to make them pay._

Billy Stubbs, Eric Whalley, Sean O'Sullivan, and Peter Kowsakowski open their Bibles one by one. Each of their faces go white as sheets when they see what has been placed inside just for them. Tom's face goes twisty with something Hermione can't find a name for.

The bullying boys have been given their own circles of hell.

Eric Whalley, who unfolds a square piece of paper, finds an intricately-drawn picture of himself in the third circle, dripping blood and being ripped limb from limb by Cerberus the three-headed dog. It is illustrated down to the very last minute detail, to a string of Eric's goopy flesh dribbling from the beast's slobbering jaws. It's terrifying.

Next is Sean O'Sullivan, in the fifth circle, half-drowning in a lake of mud. Choking on the soupy dirt. He's surrounded by rabid sinners, tearing at each other and naked.

Peter Kowsakowski lies in a flaming tomb, while screeching Furies lash whips at his skin and have their serpentine hair sink fangs into him. The spraying blood is eerily accurate.

And Billy Stubbs, the leader of the crew, lies in the very last circle. He has been given demon wings, which catch and flex in a phantom wind, and his body is forever frozen in a vast lake of ice. He has three heads, swollen and grotesque, crying and contorted painfully. Each head has another head gripped in its mouth, squashed between long sharp teeth and screaming. They are the heads of Eric Whalley, Sean O'Sullivan, and Peter Kowsakowski.

This last piece is utterly disturbing.

It's even more incredible.

Hermione stares on at the drawings in horrified amazement, recognizing the scenes from Dante's _Inferno _with a burt of nausea.

Tom recognizes the fear in Billy Stubbs's eyes when the boy crumples up the horribly beautiful drawing, shoves it in his pocket, and sees him staring. Billy looks away hastily.

Tom sits back, satisfied, and mouths the words to the verses.

* * *

Hermione has never been so sick in all her life.

She closes her eyes, moaning softly when the doctor Mrs. Cole has called over replaces the thermometer he's put under her tongue with a cool washcloth on the forehead.

"She has a temperature of 105 degrees and a slight stomach bug," she hears him tell Mrs. Cole, who makes a noise of concern through the blurry fuzz in Hermione's ears. "Give her these antibiotics and wait on the fever. It should sweat itself out by tomorrow. If it doesn't, call me and I'll come back right away."

"Now _you, _young lady," the doctor says, tapping her nose and rousing her from the spell she's semi-drifted into. Hermione blinks at him groggily. "You rest and get better. I don't want any rough-housing or messing around or anything of that sort. You're on bed rest. Got it?"

She makes a vaguely humanoid sound, which seems to work, because he finally leaves her alone.

Then the doctor is gone and Mrs. Cole tells her to feel better and that she's going to make sure everyone stays out of her room for the entire day and that she'll bring her lunch up soon. Hermione nods. She is asleep before the door slips shut.

She dreams of Mum and Papa.

Some odd number of hours later, Hermione opens her eyes to find a pair of hands changing the warm washcloth on her head for an ice-cold one. She sighs at the sickle-sweet relief and Tom's face swims into focus, hovering over hers and creased with concern.

_I thought no one was allowed in here, _Hermione thinks distantly, but is too tired to ask Tom how he got in. Tom always finds ways to break the rules. To get to her.

"How're you feeling, Hermione?" her friend murmurs, tracing a finger down her too-warm cheek and frowning. She shrugs, stirring when he slips into the cot with her, under the sheet she lay sweating on top of and reaching over to fluff her pillows. She's been given extra since she's sick.

"Better?" he asks.

Hermione yawns. "Yeah."

"Good." He settles in, then turns alert and anxious again in a flash. "Wait. You hungry?"

"A little..."

He grins deviously. "Good. I brought you chicken-noodle soup. Mrs. Cole said that'd make you feel better."

"Mrs. Cole let you in?"

"'Course she did." And he bats his thick girl lashes at her, pulling his angel eyes – which are very impressive and never fail to sway Mrs. Cole, or any other female. Hermione smiles a bit.

"Here, have some," Tom commands, spooning some of the soup out from the bowl steaming in his lap and blowing on the liquid before bringing it to her mouth. She blushes – which does nothing to help her condition – and mumbles _thanks_ before taking a sip.

"I'm full," she complains when the soup bowl is half-empty. "And tired."

"I'll read you a book to help you sleep." Tom slurps the rest of the soup down and jumps up, grabbing a dog-eared paperback he must have brought off the bedside dresser. Hermione becomes a little more alert at the sight, trying to see the cover.

"Which one is that?" she queries, when she fails to find out for herself.

"_Wuthering Heights." _He pauses. "Girls like romances, right?"

"Well, yeah, but just 'cause I'm a girl don't mean I only read Emily Brontë and sappy stuff-"

"No, that's 'cause you're _you_," he says in correction. He doesn't give her a chance to puzzle over this though and wriggles back in the cot, plopping his head down next to hers and holding up the book so they both can see. He flips open to the first page, starting up. "_1801–I have just returned from a visit to my landlord–the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with…"_

Hermione is fast asleep within two chapters.

Tom sees she's drifted, moves around so that her head rests on his shoulder, and keeps on reading.

* * *

It's the first field trip of the year.

Hermione is excited. The whole orphanage is excited. Tom says he knows a place they can swim in, a place the other kids don't know about that's all his. He'll let her go in it though. So long as she doesn't tell anyone else about it. She agrees.

The bus ride to the beach is sweaty and tight, and the other children laugh and point out the windows, while Mrs. Cole fans herself at the front of the bus with a magazine and chats with the driver. They all wear rather saggy bathing suits under their grey tunics and have beach towels. It's hot in July.

Hermione sits with Tom. He holds her hand and tells her all about the seaside. She listens closely.

When they all get there, they squelch out of the bus's narrow doors like juice squeezed out of a ketchup bottle. Children go springing in all directions, tangling themselves in washed-up seaweed and tearing off through the sand before Mrs. Cole has a hope of rounding any of them up for safety instructions. The matron watches them all go, helplessly, and takes up her post near the surf with a resigned sigh.

The sun's balmy. The saltwater is so tangy-strong Hermione can taste it.

"So where's that special place?" Hermione whispers in Tom's ear, who grins and whispers back "Follow me. I'll show you."

He still has her hand, so when she nods all Tom has to do is pull her along the coastline.

They weave in and out, to dance around seashells and rocky ocean clutter, to laugh and skip away from the tide when it charges up like it means to get them. The farther away they get from the others, the tighter Tom's hand around hers becomes. He's real excited. The sound of laughter behind them is quieter now.

"Here it is," he finally announces, spectacularly, and slips them around the jutting crop of a cliff that soars high above them. On the other side is a small pool, not big enough to be a lake, but not small enough to be a pond either. It's perfect.

It's theirs.

"This is…so…so…" Hermione searches for a good adjective. Finally, she impressively settles with "Exemplary" and Tom is very smug. He takes off his uniform, until he's down to his swim trunks, and Hermione does the same. They go swimming.

They play games for what feels like hours, splashing and pretending and shouting out. Hermione doesn't go in very deep, because she can't swim, and Tom teases her for it. He shows off and goes to the very center of the pool, doing a backstroke and all sorts of flips, shaking his dark hair free of water when he comes back up. Hermione floats in the shallow end.

When Tom gets bored, he climbs out and dries off, grabbing the sketchbook he's brought and retreating far off to drier land in search of better scenery. Hermione blows bubbles into the water with her nose.

Loud laughter startles her.

"Looky here, Amy!" the voice of Billy Stubbs cries, and Hermione turns around to see the pimply-faced boy stumble in. She fills with dismay when she sees Amy Benson (who isn't half so bad, but has a big crush on Billy and always picks her nose like she's digging for treasure) follow him. Why are they here? This is supposed to be her and Tom's spot. _Only_ theirs.

"Look what I-" Billy Stubbs stops yelling like a Neanderthal when he sees her, bobbing in the pool and staring at him. A big glare replaces his smile. "What are you doin' here, Broomhead?" he demands.

Hermione scowls. She hates that nickname. _Broomhead. _It's not even clever.

"Well, _Broomhead?" _Billy says again, taunting her now, and Amy has arrived and laughs at her. Hermione goes red.

"You shut your fat mouth, Billy, or I'll make you," she threatens, to which Billy scoffs and marches down the slope toward her. Hermione struggles out of the water, straggly hair dripping and looking much like a wet cat whose fur has been rubbed the wrong way. Amy scampers after Billy like the lovesick goon she is.

"Oh yeah? How you gonna do that, Broomhead?" the boy sneers. "You gonna poke me in the eye with that giant ugly hair? You gonna bite me with those beaver teeth?"

"They're not beaver teeth!" Hermione shouts, because they're really not. She knows her two front teeth are slightly-overly-large and everything, but they've been that way since she turned six and her Mum and Papa told her there isn't any tooth fairy. They also explained that she'd be getting grown-up teeth to take the place of her baby ones, which would look too big until she grew into them.

She's still growing into them, obviously – but Billy Stubbs is too thick to get that.

"Watchya gonna do, beaver?" Billy mocks, pulling back his top lip so his teeth seem larger and making a disgusting face at her. "You gonna munch on some wood and make a dam?"

"Don't say that word," she snaps, in a fashion that is decidedly Mrs. Cole reminiscent, and Amy giggles.

"She's such a wet blanket," Amy says and Billy sniggers, agreeing. Hermione blushes. "What d'you think you are, the Queen?"

"No, I-"

"Ooh, better be nice, Amy," Billy interrupts loudly, eyes going big. "We're in the presence of _the Queen-"_

"Quit that!"

"Oh yes, yes, your ladyship." Amy is laughing herself silly, while Billy makes lots of bows and a show of worshipping Hermione and her 'great ugly bush of hair.' "Does your ladyship have any requests? Shall we get you a new barber, or a big piece of wood you can snack on-? Aw, looky, Amy! She's cryin' like a wittle baby. Oh, your ladyship we are so, _so_ sorry-"

"You'd better be."

They all look up, stunned, and Billy Stubbs goes pale as a Dracula victim at the sight of Tom Riddle. Hermione keeps crying.

Tom's eyes are hard. "What did you do to her?" he barks, coming over and pushing Hermione behind him. He's tall for a ten-year old and towers over the rest of them. Billy flinches. Hermione's sniveling is the only sound to be heard for a tense minute that seems to last forever.

Tom's eyes slowly narrow. "You going to answer me, Billy, or do I have to make you?"

Billy glares at him. "I ain't afraid of you, Riddle." He spits.

Tom gazes at the wad of saliva bubbling on the sand, then raises his quiet stare to Billy. Amy looks afraid. Billy is in way over his head.

"No?" he questions.

"No." Billy shakes his head firmly. He grins.

Because he thinks he's won.

"Then let's settle this like men." Tom holds Billy's eyes as a serpent does a rabbit. Billy's own pet rabbit, Babbity, is safe in Amy Benson's arms and sleeping. He's an adorable white bundle with red beads for eyes. "See that cave over there? Mrs. Cole won't see us in it. We'll go there and fight it out."

Billy squares his shoulders. "Fine."

Tom smirks. "Fine."

So Billy leads the way, with Amy scampering after him looking worried and cradling Babbity. Hermione has stopped crying and Tom takes her hand, tugging her up the hill after Billy and Amy. Taking them even farther away from the original beach they were all supposed to be playing on. He doesn't talk. He only has that Peter Pan smile and the look of someone who's got a big secret.

Hermione isn't sure she wants to know what that secret is.

"Are you really going to fight?" she asks, once they're real close to the cave Billy and Amy have already disappeared inside. Tom shakes his head. "Then what are you going to do?" Hermione says, relieved and confused at the same time.

"Something bad." Tom looks excited just saying the word. Hermione blinks.

"Bad?" she repeats. "You mean, even more bad than the time you gave Billy and the others those awful pictures?"

"Much more bad than that." Tom grins. The smile isn't Peter Pan like at all. It reminds her more of Captain Hook.

Or of some other villain entirely.

They go inside the cave and everything isn't so clear after that. Tom takes them in deep, until it's so dark they can't see a single thing. He's definitely been here before. Amy starts to cry, sure they'll never get out again and be stuck here forever. Billy tells her to grow up. She cries harder.

Tom pushes Hermione in a corner. "Close your eyes," he whispers softly, tucking a frizzy lock of hair behind her ear. The curl comes free as soon as he pulls away though.

Amy asks where Tom and Hermione went.

There's a shove, a shout, and lots of heavy breathing. Hermione's heart pounds hard in her ears when she hears a sickening crack that makes her flesh crawl all over. She bites her lip, keeping her eyes squeezed shut just like Tom told her. She listens to the sound of sobs and terror-filled shrieks, of a pulling rope. She sees nothing but the dark. She hopes this will end soon. She hears her blood roaring like a train's wheels over railway tracks…

She nearly jumps out of her skin when a hand wraps around hers.

"It's me," Tom whispers into her ear.

Hermione gasps and flies into him, holding him tight. "Can we go, Tom? Please?" she says desperately. "Can you get us out of here?"

"Well, maybe…"

"Tom!"

"Ok, ok." He snickers. "Come on, hold onto me." He adds, mischievously, "Or you might get stuck in here forever."

Hermione shudders.

When they all board the bus to go back to the orphanage, word has already spread that Amy and Billy are missing. Mrs. Cole starts a search party with the bus driver and other chaperones that have come on the outing. The adults find the two children after two hours of looking, lost in a cave with a dead rabbit hanging from the rafters. They won't say what's happened no matter how hard Mrs. Cole pushes for answers.

But the other children know.

Yes, they know about Tom Riddle, and they know two things they'll never ever forget. One: something unspeakable happened in the cave that day. And two: unless they want the same thing to happen to them, they'll stay far away from Hermione Granger.

At all costs.

* * *

**AN: Creeped out yet? Yes? No? Laughing yourself silly? Writing Obama love notes?**

**Please review and thanks for reading!**

**Kisses,  
ImmortalObsession**


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Hi everyone. Thank you all for reading and favoriting, and extra thanks to those who review! *xoxoxo* Many of you noticed some grammar issues in the chapters and I have to say BHC is an un-betaed story. I've never had a beta before and I'm totally open to one and everything, I just don't know how to find one (?) If any of you know any good (_really _good) betas who might be interested... shoot me a PM. :)**

**And as to the question of why Tom Riddle is so interested in poor Hermione... **

**Like I'm gonna tell you.**

* * *

_London, England_  
_1936_

A man named Dumberton – or something like that – comes to take Tom away.

Hermione listens through the door to Tom's room, pressing her ear against the glass cup she's got there and struggling to make out conversation. She hears Tom say _I'm not mad! _and something about the new kid Dennis Bishop and Amy Benson, too. She bites her lip, listening harder.

What if Dunderbore is one of those crazy shrinks? What if he makes Tom go to some horrible hospital, to strap him up and do evil things to him?

They'll have to escape.

She can make a plan. She's smart. She'll think of something. And with Tom, a boy slippier than quicksand and just as fast, there'll be no stopping them-

Footsteps approach the door and Hermione leaps away, grabbing her sponge and bucket and pretending like she's been scrubbing the perfectly clean floor all along. She tries not to look up when Dumblyore steps out, but can't help staring when she sees his vibrant purple suit.

"Miss," Dudlemore says, and she freezes. Reluctantly, she looks up to see the man staring at her with twinkly blue eyes. She blinks. "I believe you are supposed to scrub the floor with that sponge there, not the bucket." He beams.

Hermione frowns, looks at her cleaning instruments – which are in the wrong hands doing the wrong things – and she flushes, mumbling _oops _and fixing them quickly. She thinks her catastrophic hair has turned red from all her blushing. Doomblere chuckles and moves right on along.

As soon as he's gone, Hermione springs up and dashes into Tom's room.

"What'd he say?" she gasps, hands dripping with soap-water and thick hair practically crackling. She shoves a frizzy, itchy tuft out of her eye. Tom is sitting on the bed, staring at something in his hands, and he momentarily lifts his head to look at her. She rushes over.

"You don't have to go," she says quickly. "They can't make you. I mean, I think they can't. I read a law book once and you can get a lawyer to defend you, you know. It'll cost a bit of money but I'm sure we can scrape something up if we look around–"

"I got in." It's just a murmur.

Hermione stares at Tom, confused. "Got in what?"

"The…the school." He's looking at her, but he's not looking at her really. His eyes are shining right through her – seeing something she cannot. "They accepted me. They gave me a scholarship and I'm going there next month, to–to–to-" He can't finish in his wild excitement. He's grinning big. He's in awe.

She doesn't get it.

"Tom, what d'you mean?" Hermione asks, frustrated. Tom's eyes clear and he looks at her. _Really _looks at her.

"I mean," he says lowly, in a fierce whisper, "_I've been accepted by the Hogwarts Institute of Fine Arts."_

"Oh." She's surprised. Then it sinks in and she's thrilled. "Oh, Tom! That's amazing. But how? I mean, how did they know about your art?"

"I don't know." He stares down again, at what she now understands is an acceptance letter. "Professor Dumbledore says he's seen me drawing out and about though. You know, when we go into the city…" he trails off, and he's gazing into the distance again, eyes glossy and faraway.

"Tell me more," Hermione says, snapping him out of it. "What're you gonna learn there? Where is it?" She remembers when she went to a girl's charter school, in a time that feels very far away from now, and is endlessly happy for Tom.

That feeling diminishes when he tells her Hogwarts is a boarding school.

"I'll be back for holidays though, I suppose," Tom says, reading through the letter he's already read twenty-six times in the past hour and frowning in thought. "Or at least, I'll be back for summer vacation. That's what it says here anyway-"

"That's _it?" _Hermione says, horrified. She feels cold. She feels like someone has dumped a big ice bucket all on her world, making things slippery and topsy-turvy and…and ruining absolutely everything.

Tom looks at her, still grinning. Seeing her expression, his smile disappears. "What is it?" he asks, scooting over to her across the sea of papers that have come out of a thick manila envelope stamped with the Hogwarts crest and now lie all over his bed. He tugs one of her hands free, intertwining it with his. "What's wrong, Hermione?"

"I…" She hesitates. She doesn't want to tell him. To be a bad friend. "Nothing. Never mind."

Tom scowls. "You know I hate it when you don't tell me things. Tell me the truth."

Hermione sees the dark look in his eyes, sighs, and does. "It's just, what am I going to do without you?" she finally finishes. "I don't have any other friends here and I'll be all alone-"

"You don't need other friends," Tom says immediately. He puts his head on her shoulder and uses the full force of his angel eyes to rid her of any doubt, with a syrup-sweet smile to boot. Hermione finds herself melting like a popsicle in the middle of July. "Besides, I'll send you letters all the time," he promises. "You won't even know I'm gone."

Hermione frowns. She isn't so sure about that.

Tom's breath tickles as he whispers into her ear, softly. "Be happy for me, Hermione. This is meant to be."

* * *

The months, as predicted, pass very slowly. Hermione goes to Sunday services at the chapel with the other orphans and sits in the pews alone, reading along as directed. She eats by herself in the eating hall (Martha wouldn't sit with her when she asked and neither would anyone else, for some reason) and no one besides Mrs. Cole ever talks to her really. She marches with the others during bomb shelter drills. She spends a lot of time reading in the makeshift library.

She's very lonely.

Tom sends her letters, like he said he would, and she learns all about Hogwarts through them. He tells her how wonderful everything is there, how _new _everything is, how many people there are. She knows all there is to know about the whacky professors, the classes, the students, his friends and his enemies. Tom says he has so much to tell her when he gets back.

She counts the days until he does.

And then, at last, Tom returns.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1947 – present_

Hermione is stocking shelves when she notices a man looking at her.

He's tall, with broad shoulders and burly arms under his sports jacket. He's rather cute too. All blonde curls and blue eyes.

She averts her eyes hastily, moving onto the next aisle to look for a display she can fix. She finds one quick and makes a beeline to it. She tidies the strewn necklaces and color-coordinates the earrings the way Madame Pomfrey trains all her employees to do. She reprimands herself for being such a chicken.

A minute or two later, the man from before walks into her aisle. He looks nonchalant. He pretends to examine a selection of scarves and she watches him curiously, distracted by the dimple in his cheek. He sees her looking and smiles.

Hermione looks away so fast her neck cracks and she blushes hard, because she's being an idiot. Because she's letting _him _rule her life still, even though she hasn't seen _him_ in over six years. Because she's afraid every time a man her age looks at her.

Working as a seamstress in a store that strictly only receives female customers has always fit her perfectly.

But, for some reason, there's a man in the shop today.

_Stop it, _Hermione berates herself. _You're being stupid. You can talk to guys._

Before she can lose her nerve, she spins around and pastes on her best_ what-can-I-do-for-you? _smile. "Can I help you, sir?" she says springily. Like nothing would please her more than to help people pick what color underwear best suits them.

It's all about being artificial in this business, she reflects.

The man blinks at her optimistic beaming and scans her, briefly. He grins. "Actually, yes." His voice is very deep. Hermione crosses her fingers behind her back. "I'm shopping for Mother's Day, but I haven't got a clue what to get my mum. Maybe you can help me out?" His smile is definitely flirtatious.

Hermione opens her mouth to reply, to say yes readily, but…

She can't.

Paranoia hits her on all sides, crashing and tormenting and making her swallow thick. Questions she's spent years shoving into the darkest corners of her subconscious come rolling in like waves. What if _he _sees? What will _he _do? The man will be hurt for sure. Tom hates it when boys look at her… He hates it when others touch her… She doesn't need friends. All she needs is him, _him,_ and no one else ever-

_Stop._

The memories evaporate, along with the terror. Hermione breathes a sigh of relief and thinks to herself, _I'm not a child anymore. I am a full-grown adult, independent and deserving. I am not irrational. I am in perfect control. _

She looks up at the man, whose smile is faltering now, and she helps him find some lipstick for his mother. His name is Cormac McLaggen. While he browses through the different brands and shades, she finds herself looking over her shoulder more than once.

As expected, there's no one there to look out for.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1937_

He's a bit taller. And he talks different, like a character from a Dickens or Jane Austen novel. So Hermione starts talking that way too, which isn't too hard since she reads so much 19th century literature anyway. He tells her awesome stories. He makes her laugh and smile and envious and awed all at once.

She's really missed him.

It's picture day and the fourth day since Tom's come back when… trouble starts up again.

They all stand in line, each waiting for their turn with the photographer behind the black screen, and most of the boys – who are much wickeder now – put the tiny mirrors they've been given on the black-and-white tile floor, angling them with their toes so they can look up the skirt of the girl standing in front of them. Hermione is worried someone might look up hers at first, but Tom takes care of that by bunching her skirt in a fist and holding it while they wait in line.

Not that anyone would dare to peek at Hermione Granger's knickers when Tom Riddle is around.

It's almost her turn. Hermione peers into her little mirror and tries to smooth down some of her horrible frizz without success for a few minutes. She meets two dark eyes in her mirror and grins. Tom grins back.

But then his face goes sour.

_What's wrong? _Hermione frowns and turns around, to see what he's glowering at, and gasps when Tom's fist connects with the face of the boy behind him with a crunching _crack_. It's Peter Kowsakowski, who hits the ground solid and cries out while Tom yells above him in a shrill scream: _"What are you looking at her for?"_

Everyone's staring. Peter, who's crying on the floor, grabs his bleeding nose and cowers. Tom's unreachable in his blinding white rage.

"_Don't you ever – _ever – _let me catch you looking at her again, filth," _he hisses, kicking him hard in the ribs. They all flinch at the blow and kids start shouting, 'fight, fight!' "_Or else I swear to God I'll tear you apart and really make you scream-"_

"TOM RIDDLE!" Mrs. Cole screeches, coming down on them like an avenging angel. She's furious. "What the devil are you doing? Have you gone mad? Come with me, right now. Jennifer, wash Peter off and get him an ice pack."

Tom scowls and Mrs. Cole gives him an evil look, pointing one shaking finger down the opposite corridor, away from the photo op. He shuffles down, and Hermione and the others look on, stunned. All of them jump when Mrs. Cole whips back around.

"What're you all looking at, eh?" she demands. The children immediately spin the other way. "And you, Hermione, you come here as well."

Hermione gapes at Mrs. Cole. _She'_s in trouble? But she hasn't done anything. She never does anything!

"Don't give me that look, get going," says Mrs. Cole sternly, starting down the hall again. Hermione follows, well aware of the many eyes on her and catching up to Tom quickly. She sends him a worried look. He doesn't meet her eyes and glares ahead of them, balled fists shaking and hunched shoulders rigid.

"Stop right there," the matron behind them finally calls, and they do, turning around to face her. Mrs. Cole puts her hands on her hips and scrutinizes them.

Then she asks it. _The _question.

"What's happened here?"

"Peter was-" Tom begins, schooling his handsome features into a Mary-and-Joseph-innocent mask, but Mrs. Cole shakes her head and points. Points at Hermione.

She gulps.

"No, no, not from you, Tom," Mrs. Cole interrupts. "I want to hear the story from Hermione here. I know she'll tell me what's really happened."

Tom scowls.

Hermione squirms.

"So, dear," Mrs. Cole says, in a controlled, kind voice. "Can you tell me what's happened just now?"

Hermione is staring at her matron in frozen horror when Tom sidles up just behind her, bending his mouth to her ear. "_Lie_," he whispers. "Tell her he was trying to look up your skirt and that I stopped him."

She bites her lip. It's a good idea. But it means lying to Mrs. Cole. She doesn't want to do that.

She doesn't want to be a bad friend either.

"Come on, Hermione," says Tom impatiently. "Do it now and make it good."

"Well, Hermione?" Mrs. Cole raises both eyebrows expectantly. "I'm waiting."

When the lie passes Hermione's lips, finally, Tom squeezes her hand. In encouragement. In approval. He smiles at Mrs. Cole, who is red with fury and telling one of the helpers to get the paddle for Peter.

Hermione remembers Peter's broken nose and knows she hasn't made the right choice.

Tom chuckles quietly.

* * *

The summer with Tom is a rotation between Sunday service, trips to the seaside and their secret pool, and stolen outings to art museums. The first time they sneak off, Hermione is nervous about being caught, but Tom gets them in and out easy. Mrs. Cole is none the wiser. Tom's sketchbooks fill faster now.

Tom draws _the Last Judgement _by Michelangelo into his sketchbook. Every other minute or so, he squints at his picture and his face screws up in displeasure as he chews the nasty-tasting eraser of a pencil. He's concentrating. Hermione asks why he's copying the artists.

"I'm not copying," Tom corrects, squinting at _Guernica. _"I'm learning through repetition. You learn from the Masters."

"The Masters are the earlier artists? Like da Vinci and the rest?" Hermione guesses.

"Yes." Tom erases something, then fixes it with a swift stroke of lead. "And Professor Merryweather says I should practice my observation drawing."

She nods and retreats back to her side of the bench, where they both sit back-to-back. She's cross-legged with a large tome in her lap. He's long-legged and sprawled about carelessly, with a sketchbook and pencil in-hand. They're inseparable.

Tom likes it that way.

Hermione sees a group of children pass by, laughing and pointing at the artworks. They're having fun, all of them. They goof off. They giggle at the pictures of naked women. They're like a big family.

Hermione moves closer to Tom, wishing he'd let her have other friends.

* * *

Moody comes back.

Hermione hasn't seen the oddball retired police officer in nearly two years, so to say that she's surprised when Mrs. Cole shows up at the eating hall with the trench-coat-donning man in tow would be a complete lie. She's _stunned_.

"Hermione," Mrs. Cole calls out, over the chaotic jumble of shouting and laughter. "Hermione, come here please!"

Tom frowns. "Who's that man?"

"It's Moody." Hermione stands up, excited and grinning. She knows why he's here. He's here to take her back, back to her Mum and Papa. They've gotten back together and they regret everything they've done. They want her back. They're going to send her to school. She's going to have everything she's lost again.

"Come on," she says eagerly, hurrying to Mrs. Cole and Moody with Tom close behind. "You'll like him. He's really interesting."

Tom nods, but he doesn't look convinced.

"Hullo again, missy," says Moody, once they arrive, and he holds out a clawish hand for her to shake. She shakes said hand happily. "How're you these days?"

"Good, sir."

"Good." Moody rolls back on the balls of his feet, looking a good deal uncomfortable, and his glass eye fastens onto Tom, who is holding her hand possessively and trying to hide her behind him. He raises two bushy brows the color of yellow rust. "Who's this here, eh?"

"Tom." Hermione smiles at the boy in question, who is watching Moody with suspicious eyes. Tom has successfully gotten her behind him. She stands on her tip-toes and peers over his shoulder at Moody, beaming. "He's my best friend." _And he can come with us when I go back to my parents_, she thinks. All Mum and Papa have to do is sign the papers.

"He is, eh?" Moody nods, extending a hand Tom shakes firmly. Moody eyes him. Tom eyes him back. "Righto, chap," he says at last.

"Yes, yes," Mrs. Cole interrupts hastily. "Ah, Moody, perhaps you would like to speak to Hermione somewhere…private?"

Moody looks even more uncomfortable at this. It's an odd expression on him: uncomfortableness, Hermione observes. His chin sinks into his flabby neck like it's trying to disappear and his glass eye kind of whirs around, like the needle of a clock gone kooky. He does indeed look very uncomfortable.

"Er, well, yes, I suppose," blusters Moody. He stamps his wooden leg and jerks his shy chin at the double doors leading out of the cafeteria, marching off abruptly. Mrs. Cole tells Hermione to go with him.

"Wait one second, Tom Riddle." They both turn around, to see their matron clucking her tongue and waggling a disapproving finger at them. "I didn't say _you _needed to go. This is Hermione's business, not yours."

Tom pouts. "But she needs me."

"She'll be just fine on her own, dear."

Tom changes tactics then, putting on his angel eyes and giving Mrs. Cole a miserable look that would make the Devil weep with pity. "Please, Mrs. Cole? I promise I won't bother anybody."

Mrs. Cole sighs. "Now, Tom," she lectures. "Hermione needs to do this on her own. You can see her later, alright?"

"But-"

"Off you go, Hermione, my dear." Mrs. Cole clamps a firm hand on Tom's shoulder, to keep him from going after her. "No, no, you're staying right here with me, Mr. Riddle."

Tom hisses like a spited cat.

Hermione glances back at her irate friend, concerned, but then the doors swing shut and she goes after Moody. He has news for her. Tom will have to wait.

When Moody finally decides the outdoor, sad-looking courtyard is better than all the other places they've paced and hastened through to tell Hermione her news, he has her sit down. She wonders why – how can she sit down when she's so excited? Is sitting supposed to help her somehow? Or does it just make him less uncomfortable? – but she does anyway, because Moody looks like he might keel over at any moment.

The squirming man goes back and forth before her in sharp, stern steps. His right wooden leg clunks against the sidewalk heavier than his left one.

Just when she's getting a little bored, Moody stops and gruffly says, "Missy."

"Mr.," Hermione replies.

Moody looks surprised at this, then shakes himself and continues, "I have some news for you. It is not of the most pleasant kind, but in a way, it is, because it's all about the way you look at it. I hope you look at it in a sort of happy way, but I understand if you don't, because you are very young and may not learn to look at it in a happy way until you are much older. Do you understand?"

"I suppose."

"Good." He nods, then starts pacing again. He stops. "Well damn."

Hermione frowns. "What is it, sir?"

"I'm not very good at this."

"At what?"

He hesitates. "At…at informing you that your…" There must be something large and painful in his throat, because he swallows thickly and goes a little purple in the face. Hermione watches him curiously. Moody gathers himself.

"My dear… Your… your mother has passed away," he says at last.

Hermione doesn't understand at first. Then, her heart goes heavy and the world narrows until all she can see is Moody's glass eye, jumping around and bouncing like a nervous chipmunk. There is something large and painful in _her_ throat now. She stops breathing.

She is sure the world has stopped spinning, too.

She doesn't really hear the rest of Moody's words. He talks about funerals and deeds and other morbid things. About Heaven. About God's forgiveness and suicide. Hermione thinks he says her Papa is still missing. It doesn't occur to her to wonder how Moody found out her parents haven't really been dead all this time.

And then Moody is gone and Mrs. Cole is there, trying to reassure her, but it doesn't work so she leaves and comes back with a little handsome boy. The boy sits down beside her in the empty courtyard and puts his arms around her, laying his head on top of hers and rubbing her back. Never saying a word.

A tear slips out of her eye. It's different than the usual tears. This one means more somehow. It isn't shed because she's scraped her knee or because Eric Whalley said something stupid about her hair.

It's because she's never going to see her parents again.

For real now.

She cries into Tom's shirt and he holds her while she cries, for hours and hours. Until the blue sky turns grey with rain clouds and she can't cry anymore. Until she lies against him, feeling small and empty and abandoned. Orphaned.

"It'll be alright," Tom murmurs, petting back her thick hair. She won't pull her face out of his shirt. "It's alright." He rests his cheek on her head, smiling. He likes holding Hermione. He likes the way she clutches him like she has no one else to hold onto. Like he's the only one in the world. "You've always got me, Hermione."

She sucks in a shuddering breath. "Really?"

"Really." Tom kisses her sticky cheek and licks his lips. They taste salty. Hermione watches him with big, sad eyes. He stares at the different shades of brown and the ring of yellow around her small pupils. They're tiny dots in a whole vat of caramel. He wonders what sort of paints he could use to make that color. To capture the miserable wetness in her eyes.

Hermione closes her eyes and starts sobbing again before he can figure it out.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1938_

Tom returns from art school handsomer and taller. He does his hair a different way. His voice is deeper. He tells Hermione stories about Hogwarts and the girls he's kissed there, about Professor Slughorn who teaches ceramics and about all his different studies. He doesn't just draw anymore, but paints and inks and sculpts out of the wet sand on the coast during their monthly trips to the seaside.

Over the year when Tom was gone, Hermione had started to sneak off to the big city library and check out books there. Mrs. Cole doesn't notice the novels she now carries aren't from their makeshift library. If she did, Hermione doesn't know what she'd say. She's not a good liar like Tom.

In the museum, Hermione looks up from _Through the Looking Glass _and peers over Tom's shoulder, trying to catch a peek of his picture. Before she can though – like always – Tom swiftly flips the cover of his sketchbook down and smirks at her, cocking a brow. "Can I help you?" he asks.

She pouts. "Why won't you let me see it?"

"Because it's not finished." He turns back to the object of his attention, _Madonna & Child, _and studies it. "It has to be finished before anyone can see it."

Hermione sighs. "Alright, alright." She wriggles back over to her side of the bench, resting her back against his and reopening her book. Her head comes to just between his shoulders. He really has gotten taller.

Sometime later, Tom leans his head back against hers and sighs. "Your hair is like a pillow."

She scowls. "Shut up."

He sniggers.

"Are you done yet?" she says curiously, twisting around. In response, Tom offers her his sketchbook. She takes it, noting that his long pale fingers are tinged black on the tips from charcoal. She examines the picture and then gives it back. It's extraordinary, as always.

Tom stands up, pulling his messenger bag over his neck and slipping his supplies inside it. He holds out his hand to her, a silent command she knows well now, and she slips her hand inside it. He twirls their fingers together and tugs them toward the exit, where the critical whispers and strolling observers of the art museum are traded for busybodies on the city street. Hermione sees a kiosk selling drippy ice cream and her stomach growls. Tom catches her hungry look.

"Do you want some?" he asks, nodding at the vendor.

"Yes." She bites her lip. "I wish we had some money."

Tom grins like Peter Pan. "Money? What do we need money for?"

She looks at him questioningly, but he's already let her go and is weaving through the buzzing crowd to the kiosk. She watches anxiously. What if Tom gets caught? What will she do then? What will she tell Mrs. Cole?

She wishes she never said anything.

Minutes later, Tom returns, two strawberry ice creams in hand and a smug smirk plastered to his handsome face. People look at him curiously as they pass. But then again, Tom has the kind of face you look twice at.

"Here you are," he says regally, like he's a knight presenting the head of an evil dragon to his queen. Hermione frowns.

"You stole that?"

He shrugs.

She bites her lip. "You shouldn't have done that. It's illegal. You could get into trouble, you know-"

"So? You're the one who wanted the damn thing," he says, annoyed, and Hermione winces at the curse. She stares at her ratty shoes.

"Take it, Hermione."

She shakes her head.

Tom glares at her. "Are you saying no?"

Hermione darts a nervous look at him, then glances away hastily. She nods slightly.

Tom steps closer and she's afraid, afraid of what he'll do and what he'll say. He can be mean when he wants to. Scary. "You can't say no to me," he declares quietly.

She looks away.

"Look at me."

Hermione won't.

"Stop being so stupid," Tom snaps. "Just take the damn ice cream, won't you?"

"You stole it," she repeats. "I can't."

Tom stares at her. Waiting for her to take it back. To beg him for forgiveness. To fall back into his arms and accept that she's in the wrong.

But she doesn't.

"Fine_,_" he hisses and throws both ice creams on the ground. He stomps on them and kicks them and says nasty things to her, slicking his feet all on the sidewalk until the summer treats are nothing but dirty slush and cone crumbs. He shouts at her. He yanks at his hair and roars like a rabid animal. Hermione's lip quivers.

"What are you crying for?" Tom spits, seeing her tears and sneering. "You're the one who made me do it. You wanted the blasted, _stupid_, god-damned ice cream!"

"Why are you acting like this?"

"I said _stop crying_." He storms back over to her and she does, abruptly, but that doesn't stop him. Tom grabs her cheek and pinches it hard, twisting the skin harshly. She shrieks. "When I tell you to do something," Tom snarls, "you do it. Got it?"

She nods quickly, eyes watering.

"Good." His narrowed eyes slowly calm and he lets go of her cheek, which feels raw and bleats painfully. Hermione sobs miserably and cups the purpling skin. "If Mrs. Cole asks about that, you fell, alright?" Tom says quietly.

Hermione nods.

They walk back to the orphanage in silence. Hermione wants to be far, far away from Tom and his mean fingers. He's hurt her. She never wants to see him again. She hates the way he holds her hand so tightly. How his fingers twist through hers like they belong there. How handsome he is.

"Hermione," the boy himself says softly.

Hermione glances at him, sees his angel eyes, and looks away fast. No, he can't make her like him again. No, no-

"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I didn't mean it. You just made me angry."

She frowns.

"Hermione."

Her eyes almost stray to him, but then snap away quickly. She can't look. No, she can't-

"Please forgive me, Hermione." Tom stops them outside the back door to the orphanage and gives her beautiful, earnest eyes. They're deep and creamy-pure like dark chocolate, with long straight eyelashes any woman would kill for. The eyes of an angel. Hermione's breath catches just from looking at them.

Tom sees her expression change and smiles slowly, victoriously. She tentatively smiles back and he hugs her. She melts against him. He's sorry. He won't do it again.

So she'll forgive him.

"You know I didn't mean it," says Tom, resting his forehead on hers and whispering. "I'd never hurt you on purpose." Hermione nods, because she believes him. Because Tom's voice is so sweet it makes candy canes look sour.

Because he's got her heart in his faery fingers.

* * *

It's sweltering hot in the chapel. The pews seem closer together. The lot of them look like grey wax figurines, melting in the heat and panting their verses back to Reverend Richard. He preaches at them as if he thinks he's the holy prophet. Hermione is pretty sure he does. Tom is bored again and he slouches down in the bench so Mrs. Cole doesn't see him doodling pictures of serene-faced angels on the Bible. It's blasphemy, technically.

Looking at his drawings though, Hermione can't help thinking that Tom makes blasphemy look beautiful.

She doesn't give a start when Tom abandons his doodles and moves onto the next object of entertainment, which is her – naturally. She's used to it now. She knows why the other children won't hang out with or talk to her. She knows what Mrs. Cole calls her when she drinks gin with the helpers in her office.

_Tom Riddle's living doll._

She's used to it though. Or so she tells herself.

So Tom dances his long fingers up and down her stocking-clad leg, playing with the pleated folds of her skirt. They're all dressed in Sunday-best: a grey blouse and grey skirt for girls, a grey dress shirt and grey slacks for boys.

Tom somehow looks rather dashing in the dreary garb.

He keeps his eyes on the Bible balanced between them, mouthing the verses and scooting closer to her. It's blistering hot, but Tom feels cool as still water. She knows because he traces his fingers along her spine, under the back of her blouse where no one can see. Sometimes he does it absent-mindedly, but then there are other times when he touches her just to see what she'll do in response. He toys with her. She's his little experiment.

Hermione sighs and continues chanting, more loudly. If Mrs. Cole sees, she'll think it's Christian passion. But it's really just her trying to ignore Tom.

Tom never gives up though.

He smooths down the waistband of her skirt a bit, skimming his nails along the perspiring flesh there. He traces the ridges of her spine, pressing deeper, tugging the fine hairs for kicks, digging in to get her to jump and squirm. He grins triumphantly when he feels goosebumps break down her back. Hermione snaps at him and Mrs. Cole whips around, hawk-like eyes scanning her charges vigilantly. Tom slips his hand out of her shirt just as the matron finds them.

Seeing nothing amiss, Mrs. Cole slowly turns back around.

Tom whispers in her ear. "What made you shiver?"

Hermione tries to ignore him. He asks again.

"The nails," she says at last, quickly, and resumes the reading with a blush on her face. Tom chuckles. He goes back inside her shirt, to lazily scratch her back with his nails, and she shivers again. It's hard to concentrate. He knows she likes it best when he rubs her back and soon he starts to, making her eyes flicker. She feels drowsy in that sleepy cat way, in a way that makes her want to curl up under the sun and take a nap.

Tom slides his hand around to her soft stomach, tracing the delicate flesh there. Hermione giggles when he tickles her. An elderly man sitting in front of them slowly turns around and sends her a withering death glare.

The service is over.

Everyone congregates to the vestibule, to the gentler air outside, in a slow shuffle. As she and Tom join the line of duckies that Mrs. Cole leads, Tom twirls his fingers through hers and makes sure she doesn't bump shoulders with the other boys. He doesn't like it when other people touch her.

Only he is allowed touch.

* * *

They're in the art museum again.

Hermione puts down _Jane Eyre_and looks around, wondering why Tom is taking so long. He said he had to go to the loo twenty minutes ago. She goes searching for him.

Walking through the museum and exhibits she knows well now, Hermione doesn't pause to reflect or examine as she tows along. She finally finds Tom inside an in-construction exhibit, hidden behind a dusty tarp in an empty corner of the vast showroom. She hurries over, but then slows when she sees he isn't alone.

There's a girl here.

Hermione freezes, watching Tom and the girl bend and twist messily. The girl is pretty and looks to be a year older than him. She giggles and laughs while they French kiss. Hermione blushes, because she knows Tom kisses other girls - he's told her so – but seeing him do it is another thing entirely, and it makes her feel strange. Like she's on the outside. Like she's been forgotten.

Tom opens his sleepy eyes from behind the girl's wavy golden hair and sees her watching. He blinks. She bolts.

Hurrying away, Hermione curses herself. Why did she have to stay and look? Why did Tom have to see her? Oh, this is _so_ embarrassing…

Slapping herself down on the bench, she finds she feels quite put out.

Tom comes back.

He sits down and picks up his sketchbook and pen, like nothing's happened. This makes Hermione angry. She turns on him. "Your hair looks like a rat nest," she states unkindly, then whirls back around and pouts at a Berlin.

Tom frowns at her, fixing his hair. "What's _your_ problem?"

"Nothing," she says waspishly.

He blinks at the sharpness in her tone and cocks his head, trying to get her to look at him. But she won't. She knows he has his angel eyes on and she's not falling for it. So Tom tries to wriggle his hand into hers, but she snatches it away and crosses her arms, hiding her hands under them. When he puts his chin on her shoulder, like he used to do all the time when they were really little, she just goes stiff.

"What's wrong?" Tom says at last, bewildered. "Why are you acting like this?"

"I'm not acting like anything."

"Yes you are." His eyes slant into jaguar slits. "Why are you lying to me?"

"Why do you have to know everything I'm thinking?" she snaps.

Tom's expression goes dark. He looks around at the people surrounding them. They're not paying attention, so he sneaks his faery fingers up to her neck and pinches her hard. She yelps. He twists hard and tears spring to her eyes.

"You're being rude." His voice is strangely soft for all the fire in his eyes. He whispers in her ear. "_Apologize_."

"N-no."

"Hermione," he warns. "Apologize or else I'll make you regret this."

She juts out her bottom lip, giving him a miserable look. His eyes narrow further.

"I'm going to count to three." He sounds like Mrs. Cole. Hermione scowls at him. "One… two… two-and-a-half…"

"Sorry."

He raises a brow. "What was that?"

_"Sorry,"_ she spits again, nastily.

He eyes her and unsnaps his fingers from where they're cinched around her flesh. She rubs the tender skin, moaning softly. It's going to bruise. She'll have to lie to Mrs. Cole again.

"Let's go," Tom finally says, with a strange little smile. "You've ruined my mood."

_I don't care, _Hermione thinks, but she doesn't say it. She doesn't want Tom to pinch her again. She has half a mind to pinch him.

But that would be dumb.

And Hermione is anything but dumb.

Tom Riddle is everything but sweet.

* * *

**AN: As I'm sure you've all noticed, the times in BHC jump around a lot. Just in case there's any confusion, here is a list of the ages of Hermione and Tom at places through the chapter: 1936 (Tom, 11; Hermione, 10). 1937 (Tom, 12; Hermione, 11). 1938 (Tom, 13; Hermione, 12). ...So hopefully that helps some of you. :)**

**Thank you for reading! Please click that wittle button down below and leave homegirl some love. **

**Kisses!  
ImmortalObsession**


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Oh my goodness. Did you all know that you're angels? _Angels, _I tell you. Gah. **

**Massive thanks to all of you heavenly winged-crazies for reviews and faves and all that. :) Again, this is an AH story... as in no magic. At all. Zilch. Ages through the chapter: 1939 (Tom, 13; Hermione, 12) 1940 (Tom, 14; Hermione, 13).**

* * *

_London, England_  
_1939_

Hermione keeps her hair tied back now. It sort of helps the bigness, but it doesn't do much for the frizz. She celebrates her twelfth birthday alone. Tom sends her letters all year – but not as many as he did before.

And then it's summer at last.

Tom tells her stories about Hogwarts, as he always does. He makes her go bright red when he tells her about dirty things he's done with the girls there. He calls the other boys _virgins _and snickers when Mrs. Cole reprimands them for waking up stiff and soiling their sheets. He's much taller. Somehow, he's even handsomer.

He watches her like a hawk.

Hermione moves away from an entrancing painting filled with cubes and bright, distinct colors, and she opens her latest book. It's _Henry V. _She's about to go back to her seat when Tom stops her.

"Wait." He's staring at her in a strange way. He chew his eraser thoughtfully. "Stay right there for a few minutes."

"Why?" Hermione asks.

"Just stay still," he presses.

She sighs and cast a glance around them, at the section they stand in. It's empty, save for a woman carting a baby stroller and her husband. "Alright."

While Tom draws her, she stares at a distant sculpture, studying the graceful way the marble figures curve and arch, as if they might embrace the light surrounding them at any moment. They're gorgeous. They're pure. And slightly boring, if she's being honest. Tom is finished.

"Can I look?" she says, coming over. Tom shakes his head furiously.

"No." He rakes his fingernails over the cover of the sketchbook, chipping at the cardboard and his initials stenciled into it. "Not yet. Maybe later.'"

Hermione is surprised. "It's not finished?" she questions.

"Not exactly." He shifts, restlessly. "I couldn't get your eyes right."

"Oh."

"Let's go," he says, standing up. "I think I'm done with observation. And I'm bored of this place anyway."

She smiles. "Already?"

He grins back and takes her hand, tugging it into his. Tugging her up so she falls into him. So he can kiss her cheek and slip his arm around her waist and sneak his fingers into her pocket. "Don't look so surprised," he says, steering them toward the exit. "One would think you hardly know me at all."

She scoffs.

* * *

The weather is perfect. Hermione kicks her feet in the shallow end of the pool, drying off from her swim, while Tom does breaststrokes in the turquoise ripples. He tires of this soon and comes over, dragging himself up beside her and plopping his head down on her lap. He's lanky, but his skin is smooth and pale like milk. Not pimply, like the other boys'.

Hermione remembers kind, loving fingers weaving through her hair when she was little. She doesn't know why the memory comes to her just then. Mum's face is only a blurred smudge of pastels and sadness now. The details have gone soft.

She looks down at Tom's wet black hair and his closed eyes, where those girl eyelashes curl and brush the tops of his carved cheekbones. He could be made of porcelain.

She touches his hair slowly, experimentally, and pulls her fingers through the soaked strands. They leave streaks behind, like stiff strips of black acrylic paint. Tom's eyes flutter open and watch her curiously. She bites her lip. His gaze falls on the movement.

"Is it ok?" she asks.

Tom's eyes are intent on her hesitating fingers. He pulls them back down to his head, bending the knuckles so they curl. "Yeah. It feels nice." And he closes his eyes, breaths slowing when she continues to comb his hair with her hands. The sun warms their skin and turns hers gilded. But Tom stays white as snow.

Hermione sees one of the older girls run by in the distance and stops her exercise, watching and realizing with shock that the older girl isn't older at all. It's Amy Benson. Amy Benson with…with breasts.

What the devil?

She blinks, wondering when Amy developed this new asset and why _she_ hasn't yet. She's still flat as an ironing board, for God's sake. She feels self-conscious for the first time ever. Insecure about something besides her impossible hair.

Tom opens his eyes, frowning at her. "What did you stop for?" he says.

"Oh, sorry." She shakes herself and puts her fingers in his hair again. Soothing him the way her mother used to soothe her. It works. "I just got distracted."

"Oh." Tom's eyes look catlike, the way they slip and slide and slumber. He sighs. "That feels like heaven."

She smiles, scratching his scalp gently. Tom smirks and tucks his arms under his head.

When they have to go back, it's nighttime. Hermione stands up on the rickety bus to see the billions of twinkling stars outside their window, peering out of the glass and squinting up at the blue-black sky. Tom tells her to be careful and keeps his hands on her waist, steadying her even though she says she's just fine. But he's worried she'll fall. He's worried his toy might get broken if he doesn't keep an eye on her.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1947 – present_

Cormac McLaggen asks Hermione out to dinner.

She tells him no.

Hermione hates herself for doing it. She hates _him _more. He's ruined her life.

She sits down in her little cupboard of a room in the Dursleys' flat, on the twin-size bed. Her feet are exhausted from running around in the high-heels that Madame Pomfrey makes all the employees wear. The high-heels that get her extra smiles and wolf whistles when she crosses the street.

She presses the heels of her palms into her tired eyes, wondering what it would be like to date Cormac. She tries to imagine it, to imagine him in a nice blue suit and in a restaurant, smiling at her as she sits down in the booth across from him. The candles are romantic. He's gotten her flowers. He wants to hold her hand, but the night's only just begun so he doesn't try to just yet…

_Bam._

Her fantasy is rudely interrupted.

Because instead of Cormac McLaggen, she sees _him. _She sees Tom holding her hand for all to see, twirling his fingers through hers, kissing the tips and sucking them into his warm-wet mouth and blowing on them so she shivers. He watches her reactions with dark eyes that laugh at her. That laugh at her weakness for him. That take delight in their toying. That pull her in like fish hooks reeling in a victim for the kill…

_I'm not anyone's toy. _Hermione yanks herself out of the daydream, viciously, although her body would like very much to do otherwise. She's not going there. Not ever again.

It's far too dangerous.

And it will get her nowhere.

She makes a grab for her painful shoes, swipes up her library card, and leaves before the haunting memories can catch up with her. Before her heart can dare to miss what it lost so long ago.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1939_

"Tom, let go! I don't want to go in-"

"Stop being difficult," Tom hisses. He gives her a rough shove and Hermione buckles, falling into the boiler room that seems much smaller now and banging her shoulder on the cement wall. She barely fits. It's screaming hot. "I'll come back for you in a few hours."

"Tom, don't," she pleads. "I'll just hide in my room or something-"

"_No_."

"Please, Tom," she says desperately. "It's so hot. Don't make me stay here."

Tom glares at her with angel eyes gone demonic. "Stop that. You're staying here and that's the end of it." He adds, threateningly, "Don't try to call for help either."

"_Please. _I hate the dark," she chokes. "Please, please don't make me…"

Hermione sobs when the door slams shut.

It's suffocating in here. It's muggy. It's humid. She sweats through her clothes and stays standing, crammed against the locked door and praying silently as her legs begin to cramp. She can barely breathe. After the first thirty minutes, she tries to break loose. She rams her body up against the metal door, again and again, harder and harder, until she feels dizzy and can't draw one single breath. She pounds her fists against it and screams and screams – but no one is on this floor during orientation. No one can hear her through the cement walls.

She gets angry.

And at last, two and a half long, long hours later, the door opens. When it does, she tumbles onto the floor outside. Breathless. Sobbing. Busting her lip on the tile floor.

"Hermione," says Tom, surprised. Like he didn't even know she was in there. "Are you al-?"

"Get away from me!" She slaps away his hands when he reaches for her and glowers at him through sweat-drenched strands of hair, panting. "I hate you, Tom Riddle."

Tom's eyes go wide.

She runs then, dashing down the hallway and over the black-and-white tiled floors, knocking over some kid's bucket of soapy water and escaping upstairs to the third floor. When she finally reaches her room, she throws herself onto the cot and screeches into her pillow. She sobs miserably.

She's locked the door… but he comes in anyway.

"Go away," she shouts through the pillow, but he doesn't listen. He never listens.

Tom shuts the door and slowly goes over to her, sitting down on the bed by her head. She recoils from him when he tries to touch her. He pulls his hand back and doesn't say anything for a while, and eventually, she quiets.

"Do you really hate me?" he says at last.

"No." Hermione wipes her raw eyes on her sleeve, looking over at him. He looks scared. "But…but I don't like it when you do things like that to me."

"Things like what?"

"Like locking me up," she mutters. "Like not letting me have any friends."

"But you don't need any other-"

"No, Tom." She meets his eyes bravely. "I do."

"_No_."

"Tom, you can't-"

"No," he says angrily. "No, no, _no_. You can't, Hermione. I won't let you." He draws himself up, eyes narrowed into slits, balled fists quivering with rage. "If you do, I'll hurt your friends. I'll kill them. I swear I will."

Hermione's face crumples.

"Don't cry." Tom frowns and scoots over, taking her in his arms and wrapping himself around her. He pulls his thumb over her wet cheek. She hides her big sad eyes inside her elbow and he rubs her back, soothingly. "Hermione, you can't, you can't… I won't share…"

"Why not?" she says. "I don't understand, Tom. I don't understand you."

"Because you're mine."

It's just a whisper.

Hermione is so surprised her tears stop instantly. She stares at Tom, bemused. "What do you mean I'm _yours_?" she says in a scratchy voice.

"I mean… you're mine. You belong to me," he repeats softly, flushing slightly. He picks up the quilt and puts the edge to her sticky face, wiping it clean. His eyes are round and cherubic and begging her to accept this, to love him again. It's like looking into the eyes of a kicked puppy. "No one else can have you, because you're all mine, Hermione. Just mine_._ Ok?"

Hermione doesn't know what to say.

"Please don't hate me. Please, please, _please_."

"I don't hate you." She hesitates. "But I-"

Tom cuts off the rest of her words though, by pulling her close and encasing her in a bone-crushing hug. He kisses her forehead, smiling. He says he'll make everything up to her, that she'll love belonging to him, again and again, until she starts to believe it. Until she really does believe it.

Hermione's eyes burn with a sleepy spell.

She dreams while Tom keeps on whispering.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1940_

This summer, Tom returns with his hands.

Hermione is reading _Oliver Twist _in the makeshift library when she feels them: cool fingers moving aside her incorrigible hair and going to her neck, playing up and down it like she's a slide. She shivers. She recognizes the touch. The tempo of breathing just behind her. The scent of cigs and acrylic paint and spearmint on the air. They are all third-degree burns seared into her senses.

She knows who is here without looking.

_He's back._

"Did you miss me?" Tom whispers into her ear, grinning when she jumps.

"Yes." She toys with the edge of her page, flicking it. Tom's long girl eyelashes tickle her skin when he blinks and closes in to kiss her fluttery pulse. She's nervous. He can tell because he feels the way her skin thrums under his lips, his fingertips. He loves it.

"Good," he says. "I missed you too, you know."

She bites her lip.

"Scoot over, will you?"

Hermione bookmarks her page, wriggles over on the armchair, and Tom slips inside it. He's very tall. His dark eyes dance with a newborn wickedness she hasn't seen before and he pulls her into his lap, looping his arms around her stomach as he leans back. She tries to concentrate on her reading.

Not a minute later, Tom pushes away the book and it tumbles to the floor in a splash of yellowed pages and torn binding. Hermione sighs. "What is it?" she says, twisting her head around to see him. Tom swoops in and nuzzles her nose instantly.

"I just missed you is all." He meets her eyes. They're so close it feels like he's looking right into her soul. Stripping it. "Don't you want to know how my year went?"

"I suppose."

He eyes her shrewdly. "Maybe later then."

Hermione looks away and bends down to retrieve her book, curling up against him once she has it and resuming the tale. Tom's hands make a reunion with her familiarity. They rub her back and arms. They snake down her spine and under her shirt, scraping her skin with round boy nails. Tom kisses her temple. He sings a song from the radio.

"Tom."

"Hm?"

"Do I…" She pauses. "Do I look any different to you?" And she faces him fully, expectant and hoping and anxious in that insecure girl way.

Tom glances at her face, scans it, then looks back at the window he's been gazing out of. He lifts and drops a shoulder noncommittally. "Not really."

Hermione deflates.

"Did you get all my letters?" he asks.

"Yes." She traces the book spine of _Oliver Twist, _absently. It's hard to read with Tom back. He makes everything harder. And infinitely better. So, so much better. "They were interesting."

Tom nods. A second later, a mischievous smile twists his lips. "Do you want to hear about the girls?" he prods. "They're all idiots. Nothing like you, obviously."

Against her will, Hermione smiles. "So you think I'm smart?"

Tom hums.

"Thanks." She's flattered. He chuckles.

She nestles her head in the crook of his neck and he rests his on it, telling her all about the countless hearts he's enraptured and broken like glass in the months he's been gone. About all the different girls he's enticed into bed. About his popularity and many, many friends. About the besotted teachers. About his upcoming art show. About the critics who call him _the young Picasso. _About everything.

Hermione laughs and frowns and disapproves and snorts through it all. Tom bathes in her attention. He looks to her for reactions and kisses her mouth when she smiles. She doesn't really know why he kisses her, since they aren't together or anything. But she doesn't ask.

Because she knows Tom would never tell.

* * *

After they come back from the chapel, Tom sneaks them out of the line streaming back into the orphanage and takes them to the empty courtyard. Daffodils have grown in patches and he plucks one up for Hermione, giving it to her with a dashing smile. She blushes. He keeps his hand on her right hip and guides them into the shadows, out of eyeshot.

"What are we doing back here?" Hermione whispers, peeling the petals off her flower one by one. The white teardrops float to the ground sadly.

Tom shrugs. "Nothing really. I just like it better over here."

She nods.

Tom watches her as she twirls the stem and plays with it, stroking his thumb along the soft inside of her wrist and gazing at her silently. She sees him looking and raises a brow in silent question. He smirks. She rolls her eyes. It's a wordless language only they understand.

"You know," Tom says quietly. "I haven't been with any girls since I left Hogwarts."

Hermione sighs. She knows where this is going. "Oh?"

He hums. "But I'm getting a little…" He sidles closer. "Restless."

She sends him a disapproving, withering glare. "In your dreams, Tom."

Tom laughs. "What? I didn't even ask you anything."

"But you were going to." Hermione flicks what's left of the poor daffodil at their feet and narrows her eyes at Tom when he lifts her chin with a single slender finger. When he bends close and pours his breath down her mouth in a cool, minty blow.

"You're not like the other girls." His voice is a seduction in and of itself. His beauty is painful. She's sorry to say she still isn't used to it. "I don't really care about them. I just tell them I do."

"That's horrible of you."

Tom doesn't seem to hear her. He skims his soft lips up and down her neck, making her shiver. "I care about you though," he murmurs.

"How do I know you're not just lying?" she murmurs back.

"I would never lie to you." He smiles. "…and I know you want me to kiss you anyway."

Hermione feels weightless when he gently pushes her back into the brick wall, smoothing his body into hers. They click together like _yin and yang. _Tom's lips drip down her button nose like cool, velvet raindrops.

"But we're not together," she says.

"I know." Tom kisses the corner of her upper lip, nibbling it. Her heart skips a beat. "I just want to kiss you for a while."

"Why?"

"Your lips look soft."

Hermione bites her lip when Tom bends down toward her, his mouth headed straight for hers. It's different this time. Because he's not going to give her a light peck that'll be there for a second and gone in the next. No, he _really _wants to kiss her this time. Just because he wants to. Just because her lips look soft.

He's kissed a lot of other girls.

Tom's mouth pulls and pushes hers up and down, like a yo-yo. He puts one hand at the back of her neck and the other on the brick wall behind her. She still has the chest of a nine-year old even though she's thirteen and Amy Benson looks loads more woman than she does – but Tom's not kissing Amy, she reminds herself. He's kissing _her_.

Since he's Tom, that's perfectly fine.

When Tom's wet tongue pushes at her teeth, she opens her mouth, and she gasps when his tongue sweeps inside it. He's hungry. He doesn't kiss her like she's seen him kiss other girls when they're out on daily trips to the park and he sneaks away, far from Mrs. Cole's watchful eye and behind the apple tree with some blue-eyed blonde. He kisses her hard. He kisses her like the demon he really is.

_That's why he's kissing me, _Hermione thinks, afraid and breathless and excited all at once. _Because no one else can see him like this, in his real form. Because I'm his, so he can hurt me without getting in trouble. So he can kiss someone the way he really wants to kiss someone._

And Tom wants to kiss someone so that it _hurts_.

He bites her tongue until she cries out, but then he strokes it with his so she feels good as new. He crushes her to him. He traps her in his artist hands. He sweetly scrapes his nails under her blouse over her back and kisses her until she can't breathe. He peppers fast, anxious kisses down her throat and pulls down her sleeve so he can suck on her shoulder and leave red blotches there. He gravitates back to her lips like magic is pulling him there. Her mind whirls. Tom is carnivorous.

And when he's finally finished and pulls back, he doesn't say a word. He only lopes off, back to the orphanage with his hands in his pockets. Like nothing just happened.

Hermione watches him go, mystified.

She touches her tingling mouth and frowns.

* * *

"Come on, Hermione," calls Tom. The water breaks around his lean chest like blue glass when he moves. "Don't be such a baby."

"I'm not a baby!" She scowls and glares at him, but she has to look away because the sun is right behind him and burns her eyes. She regards the deep end of their secret pool nervously. She's wearing the new bathing suit Tom bought her with money he earned from his art show. It has two lace flowers on the right shoulder and green stripes. He had her try on lots of other ones in the store and model them in the dressing room, but ended up picking this one. "I just… I just can't swim."

"I'll hold you up," he says.

Hermione bites her lip. "Well…"

He smirks, triumphant, and pads away, kicking his long legs and streaming through the glassy cerulean over to her. He comes up, sparkling with water droplets and looking like someone from the cover of a fashion magazine. Hermione carefully treads toward him. The water feels colder out here.

"Don't let me go, ok," she says warningly.

Tom grins.

Taking her in his arms, he kicks them into the center of the pool and keeps them afloat where Hermione has never ventured before. The deepness scares her. She wants to go back, but doesn't say it. She doesn't want to look weak.

"Don't worry, baby," Tom murmurs, seeing right through her. Like she's made of tissue paper. He always makes her feel like that. "I've got you."

She nods. But she's still nervous.

"Here, hold your nose," he instructs and she does, squeezing her eyes shut when he dunks them. They come back up with a grand splash and she laughs, breathlessly. She's surprised by how fun it is. Tom grins at her and counts to three, dunking them again. By the seventh time they rise and dunk, she's laughing so hard her ribs hurt.

"Enough, enough!" she declares through her giggles. Tom raises a brow.

"Enough?" He feigns an innocent look and lets her slip in his arms a little, dropping her an inch. She yelps. "Enough of what? Swimming?"

"Tom." Her smile falters. "What are you-?"

He lets go.

A shriek rips itself free of Hermione's throat a mere second before she sinks through the water like a stone, choking on the dark water and into a pool that is much deeper than she originally thought. She tries to grab onto Tom's trunks, but they slip right by her.

And she's sinking.

She's drowning.

Her heart beats frantically and she kicks and thrashes for what feels like hours but is only minutes. The water offers nothing for her to take hold of except slimy seaweed. Bubbles surge out of her mouth when she screams. Black dots float around the endless water. Muddy sand crawls between her toes and something scaly flits over her foot.

_Something's down here. _Hermione's eyes widen when a shape surges toward her in the blackness. Her ears pop and her lungs sear hotter than fire from lack of oxygen, when she's so desperate her body automatically sucks in a breath only to fill her lungs up with burning seawater. She slowly goes limp. A blob with five short seaweedy limbs reaches out to her and pulls her up, up, up – up back to air.

She sputters in the daylight, coughing. Tom is laughing beside her.

"What? Did you think I'd actually let you drown?" he snickers. Hermione gasps and clings to him, holding his neck tight and refusing to let go when he tugs at her. What she'd thought to be some sort of seaweed urchin are actually his hands. "Come on, Hermione, let-"

"No!" she shouts.

Tom stops tugging and lets her hold onto him, chuckling. He likes the way she clutches him. Like she'll die without him. Like she's got no one else. "It was just a joke," he says.

"Get me out, Tom." She's shaking like a leaf. Her frizzy curls are practically a hazard. "Please, just get me o-_out_-" Her voice cracks and trembles. Tom relents.

"Alright, alright," he says, taking pity on her and petting her hair. "Hold onto me though, alright?"

She nods frantically, gripping him so hard her nails dig marks into his pale flesh. Tom winces and pulls her firmly against him. She squeezes her eyes shut so she doesn't have to look at the black water.

When they're finally back on land, Hermione races as far away from the threatening pool as she can. When Tom sits down on the beach towel beside her, she buries her face in his chest and hides there, shivering. He rubs her back. He speaks in soothing tones. He dries her off with his towel, wiping down her goosebump-ridden legs and arms. He wrings out her hair and sits them down in the sun. He kisses her neck. He kisses her mouth while she stares at the cheery blue pool, whiter than a sheet and silent as the grave.

It's perfect.

On the bus ride back, Tom watches the tight-knit buildings in the city fly by through the windows. Hermione sleeps on his shoulder, mouth parted and snoring softly. He wants to draw the city. He wants to paint the way Hermione's bottom lip juts out more than her top one, and how the skin between her eyebrows bunches, when she has a bad dream. He wants to go back to Hogwarts. He wants to put everything he sees on paper.

He looks away from the windows and catches the new kid, Dennis Bishop, staring at them with blatant disgust on his face. He arches a brow and Dennis looks away quickly, scowling. Tom makes a note to leave the younger boy...a special picture_..._before summer ends_._

He's distracted when Hermione stirs in her sleep, murmuring a dream or two. There's a strand of hair caught under her nose and he pulls it away carefully. They go over a speed bump, jolting the whole bus, and her eyes snap open. She blinks up at him, and smiles. He finds that he likes being the first thing she wakes up to, the only thing she smiles at. He does not like to share her affections.

Because he's afraid that if he does, he'll lose her forever. And Tom is determined to never lose again.

* * *

**AN: For the next three weeks, I'll be in Guadeloupe on a language immersion program, so there won't be any updates during that time. (I'm sorry!) But t****hanks for reading and please leave your love in review form. Happy summer! *break dances***

**Kisses!  
ImmortalObsession**


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Hi again everyone! **** Thank you all for your support and enduring the wait. You blow me away. Below are replies to FAQs:**

***ahem* Yes, I am going to continue writing Tomione fics. DUH. TOMXHERMIONE IS LIKE AMAZING.**

**Now, character addition to make Tomster jealous…hmmm…that's most intriguing… And probably equals death for said character addition. But I'll add it to my brainstorming chart. *shyeah!***

**Harry and Ron will be making appearances eventually. Also, the part one and part two business of BHC is going to be enforced the next chapter. Part two ages are all adult!Hermione. **

**Props to _Atlantean Diva_ for creative Gollum quoting. Most clever.**

**Ages in the chapter:** **1941 _summer (_Tom, 15; Hermione, 14) 1941 _winter_ (Tom, 16; Hermione, 15)**

* * *

_London, England_  
_1941_

She still hasn't got any breasts.

Hermione frowns at her reflection. At least, she's finally grown into her 'buck teeth,' so Billy Stubbs can't call her _Beaver _anymore, she thinks to herself encouragingly. Not that Billy is here. He got adopted a while ago, didn't he?

She hates her hair.

She wishes it was straight or less big or…or _something. _

She sighs.

Moving out of the tiny dorm, Hermione completes her chores. She has morning duties, so she can finish quickly and doesn't have to worry about meeting her daily quota for the rest of the day. She abandons the third floor and heads down to the second, where the boys sleep. She and Tom always meet there.

Hermione walks past the bleak-looking dormitories and goes up to Tom Riddle's room, surprised to see the door cracked. She hears sounds from inside. _Sex sounds. _She stops and roughs a hand through her thick hair, glaring at the door. Is Tom seriously shagging somebody in there? He's never done that before, but there's a first time for everything she supposes…

She glances around and peeks in.

She regrets it immediately.

Because Tom isn't having sex with someone – oh no, it's not that. It's entirely different, actually, and it burns an image into her brain that will stain the retinas forever.

Tom is masturbating.

She springs away and her face goes hot as a burning skillet, while she hurries off and internally screams and screams. _Oh my God. _She did not see that. He is not _doing _that. She has not just seen- _Holy, oh my – _except she did see. She still does see. Tom on his bed with both eyes clenched shut and flushed face twisted into a grimace. He had his…his thing out and his hand was around it, going up and down fast. He was panting really heavily. He was sweating too, if she recalls correctly.

_Stop thinking about it!_

She's got to distract herself. She's got to go read or do some extra chores or-

_TomTomTom_-

Hermione puts her hand to her forehead. She could have the scarlet fever for all her blushing. She isn't going to be able to look him in the eye for a week.

She really isn't.

And so for the next five days, she does something very ridiculous. She avoids Tom like he's a lethal carrier of the black plague. She goes to meals after everyone leaves. She stays away from the makeshift library. She convinces Mrs. Cole to give her extra chores that are 'coincidentally' the exact opposite times of Tom's and will put her far, far away from the boy in question. Mrs. Cole is happy to comply and separate the two. Their closeness has always made her quite nervous.

Tom notices obviously.

Every time Hermione passes him in the hall or at the chapel, she can taste his anger and frustration on the air, electric and choking like the dry summer air. But he can't say anything. Because whenever he sees her, there are others around. Witnesses. So he keeps quiet and glares at her from afar, with accusing eyes and dark scowls that make him look like a handsomer version of Heathcliff.

Hermione feels bad.

And then she feels stupid for doing this in the first place, but she just _can't _talk to him. Because she can't get the image of him doing _that _out of her… She hits herself on the head with the broom she's sweeping the lobby with. Hard. It doesn't help much.

It's Saturday and eight days since she's talked to Tom when Hermione is walking down the hall, exhausted from all the added chores she's taken over and wanting nothing more than to climb into bed. Of course, this is exactly when Tom Riddle decides to attack.

She goes into the broom closet to put away her supplies. When she goes to the very back, the door soundlessly shuts behind her and the room is plunged into darkness. She whirls around, a scream ready on her lips but stifled by the hand that flies over her mouth like a waiting mouse trap. She inhales sharply. She tastes cool skin and dried acrylics. Somebody pulls the string suspended from the ceiling and the light bulb above clicks on.

It's Tom.

Hermione sighs, relieved, but then remembers the last time she saw him and climbs out of his grip fast. Tom grabs her before she can get too far though, his dark eyes wrought with a suppressed fury and merciless. He shoves her up against the wall by the collar of her uniform and Hermione panics, because he looks dangerous, hurt, so _angry_-

"What the fuck, Hermione?" he snaps. "Why the bloody hell have you been avoiding me?"

"Sorry." She's ashamed. Her face is flaming. "It's just that I…um…I…"

"Spit it out."

"I saw you," she blurts. "By accident. I saw you…doing stuff. Six days ago. Down there." She points with her finger. She avoids meeting his eyes.

Tom is silent for a while. He says, eyes still threatening to glare holes right through her head, "What stuff?"

"M…ma…" Her tongue won't work. She tries again, blushing so hard she could set flame at any second. "Masturbating." It's a mortified whisper.

"Oh." He doesn't look nearly as affected as she thought he would. He considers her, arching a brow. "And that's what made you avoid me for a week?"

"Well, yes."

"That's it?"

A small nod. _Goodness_, Hermione thinks. When he says it like that it just sounds stupid. But then it kind of _i__s_ stupid in retrospective, she realizes.

"Don't do this again." His voice is softer than melted butter. His eyes are hard as ice. "You never try to get away from me, Hermione. Got it?"

"Yes," she mumbles.

"You're mine, so you can't just do whatever you want and expect to get away with it." Tom puts his hand around her neck and pulls her close, some of the tightness in his shoulder lessening when he touches her. Hermione puts her hand over his. Their fingers click together, leaving her throat. "Don't do that to me again_," _he says quietly."I thought… I thought that you'd…"

"You thought that I what?" she questions.

"Nothing. It doesn't matter."

She frowns. "I think it matters."

"I just thought that you'd left me is all." He shrugs a shoulder and traces the shape of her lips with his fingertip, lightly. "And I missed you."

"I missed you too."

"Did you?" he whispers.

"Yes." She smiles slightly. "Quite a lot."

Tom's eyes hood and he leans closer. Teasing her lips with his. "Kiss me."

"Tom…"

"Don't you know how much I love you?" He cups her cheek. He bends over her, crowding and pushing until her back hits one of the shelves. Their foreheads touch and she sees his eyes are desperate. "I love you more than anyone else ever could," he says urgently. "You need me. More than anything else in the world. Right?"

Something in Tom's gaze makes Hermione feel terribly sad, terribly lonely, terribly lost. She swallows. "Right."

Tom goes silent and his fingers make ticklish patterns up and down her side, idly. There's a twisted, mutilated thing in his heart, and it's beautiful in the way that a destructive thunderstorm is gorgeous. It obsesses over her. It obsesses over himself, over everything wrong with the world. It sends his mouth moving soft against hers.

Hermione's eyes drift open and closed at the sensations Tom creates. His breathing is heavy and his nose smooshes into her cheek. She runs her fingers through his soft hair. Tom makes a guttural sound in the back of his throat and rolls his hips into her belly slowly – and she realizes he's turned on.

At first, she doesn't know what to do as Tom works himself into a panting body over her. She watches him for a while, watches the furrowed jet-black brows and bead of sweat on his upper lip, the knife-sharp cheekbones fluttering with labored breaths and clenched perfect teeth. When he sees her staring, his eyes go black with lust. He doesn't look away.

Tom goes slow, but grinds deep and deliberate so she feels every inch of him. She has to find something to hold onto when he adjusts her so it's their hips that meet, and she grabs his shoulders and tries not to get swept right onto the floor. Somewhere between here and there, her breaths have gotten slow and heavy too. Tom closes his eyes and digs his fingers into her back, where they've snaked under her shirt and given her goosebumps. His lips seal over the corner of her jaw, kissing gently. He breathes her name. He hits her right _there _and she jumps, accidentally smacking hips with him.

Tom growls like an animal.

A shudder travels through him and Hermione knows what's happened. She stares at Tom, stunned, as he slowly comes back to himself. He looks sleepy, like lust in human form. He kisses her sweet, like she's some sort of a drug he's not adamant to wheedle off of. His favorite drug.

"Kiss me back," he murmurs. "Kiss me like you've missed me, baby."

Hermione hesitates, pushes her lips against his, and twirls her tongue back and forth. He tastes good. Like…like spearmint toothpaste, she guesses. He smells like acrylic paint and sketchbook paper under that posh cologne he and all his Hogwarts friends wear. His raven hair feels so very smooth when she softly brushes her fingers through it. She keeps her legs wrapped around his waist. Her kiss is shy, but tender.

Tom smirks, settling into her. He sucks on her bottom lip and washes her mouth with his tongue. He makes her tingle inside.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1947 – present_

"You're _laying me off?"_

"Oh, _c'est pas grave_, Errrmeanzee," sooths Madame Pomfrey. "I am layzing ev_err_yzun off."

"B-b-but why?" Hermione sputters, bewildered.

"Becauze we _ar_e simply not getting enough custahm_er_s," says her boss. Madame Pomfrey twists the keys in the lock of the shop Hermione has faithfully worked at for the past two years, for the very last time. "I am s_orr_y Errrmeanzee, but zere is nozing I can do. Ze_rr_e is no _l'argent_."

No_ l'argent? _How can there not be any money? Hermione thinks frantically. She catches Madame Pomfrey's fur coat swathed arm before the French woman can walk away and her old boss looks back at her, surprised.

"_Oui, _Errrmeanzee?"

"I…" She gathers herself and takes a deep breath, looking to Madame Pomfrey beseechingly. "I need this job, madame. Please."

"I'm s_orr_y." And Madame Pomfrey seems to mean it, as she regards Hermione and sympathetically pats her hand. "I would 'elp you if I could. You 'ave been a wonderful work_err, _t_ru_ly_. _I am going back to Paris now, 'owev_er, _to live with my son. I suggest you find you_rrr_ family, too-"

"I don't have any though," she says morbidly. "I haven't got anyone."

"Well… ze oth_er _g_ir_ls found wo_rrr_k downtown…"

"Really?" _Thank_ _God. _"Where?"

"In ze…ah…Knocktu_rrrn_ Alley."

Hermione deflates. "Prostitution?" she whispers. That'sher option now? To sell her body or let it die in the street?

Madame Pomfrey sighs. "P_err_haps, for you, zhe_rre _is something I can do. I will contact you sh_orrr_tly" At that moment, Hermione is kissed on both cheeks by Madame Pomfrey, who has flagged down a cab and bid her _adieu_. She watches the fabulous woman hurry away into the yellow car. She frowns. What does Madame Pomfrey mean by _zherre is something I can do_? And how is she ever going to go to school now? To get an English degree? How is she going to pay the Dursleys? How is she going to live?

Well, she isn't going to become a whore.

She'll die first. Literally.

Hermione bites her lip and looks around at the busy dark street. There's better work out there, surely. She just has to find out where to look. She just has to make a plan. She just has to wait for Madame Pomfrey to contact her.

She tightens her scarf and hurries away into the night, too.

* * *

_London, England_  
_1941_

When Tom sneaks into Hermione's room at night to talk and tell stories and look out of the window to make fun of the people below, Hermione has to shove the reminder that he's going back to Hogwarts soon down, down far away. It's not something she wants to think about. Not when he's here now. Not when she's so happy.

Tom twists away from the window he's been staring out of. The streetlights below cast a halo around his head, illuminating it. It's ironic, because the light makes him look like an angel when he's not one at all. He's anything _but_ that.

"We draw naked girls at school, you know," he says, in his usual shocking way. Hermione blinks. "We draw naked gents, too. Sometimes they're really old. All wrinkly." He makes a face.

"Why?" she says in bewilderment.

"To learn – or so they tell us." He shrugs a shoulder and strides over, lying down on the bed with her. He slides his hand up her nightgown, on her bare back, and traces circles centimeters away from her bra strap. He wriggles close. "What do you dream about, Hermione?"

"I don't know." She plays with a stray thread of the pillowcase while he waits. "I never remember. My parents, sometimes." _My dead mother._

"There's a type of art just for dreams." Tom's eyes glow like excited, thrilling lanterns. His enthusiasm is contagious and she finds herself grinning with him. "It's called _surrealism_. One of the best surrealists is Salvadore Dali."

"He's the one with the twirly mustache?"

He nods.

She laughs. "How interesting."

Tom smirks and sidles closer. "It is." He puts her mouth against her ear, speaking there in a secret whisper: "I'm going to be famous one day, Hermione. People will adore me everywhere."

Hermione smiles. "I know, Tom."

That seems to satisfy him. He pulls back, to put his head on her pillow where they're so close their noses touch. Tom breathes in when she breathes out. She stops smiling when he kisses her, softly. She closes her eyes when he braids his fingers into her hair and rolls over her, to steal air and replace it with his lips. He circles her navel with his thumb. He kisses her lazily. Just because he wants to.

Just because.

* * *

"Swear it." Tom is impossible to say no to. Up against his archangel looks and earnest, girl-lashed eyes, Hermione doesn't have a chance.

He always gets his way.

Tom smiles at her like a faery up to no good, lips crooked to the side in a mischievous smirk. Dark eyes sparkling. "Swear it," he repeats. "Swear yourself to me."

Hermione shifts and wraps her arms around her knees, trying to worm her way out of the subject. But Tom's too overbearing to be evaded. She tries anyway.

"Why?" she asks, facing him. He's less than an inch away from her. The wooden roots they sit inside are like a natural throne, but the tree hasn't gotten any bigger in the years they've come and gone here. _They _have though. She has to sit between Tom's mile-long legs to fit in – a factor the older boy doesn't seem to mind at all.

She remembers crying here when she was nine, but can't remember what for.

"Because I want to hear you say it." Tom tucks a frizz behind one ear, bringing her back to reality when the stubborn lock boings right back into the helpless mass wreaking havoc all about her head. "Pretty," he says and chuckles in an extremely endearing way. He's trying to get his way. To break her resolve. She knows it.

It's still _so _hard to say no though.

"Come on, baby." Tom uses a voice made of untold promises and secrets black like shadow. His arms cocoon her, chest rising and falling against her back. "Tell me."

Hermione sighs. "Tom, you're being ridic-"

"Come _on_. Say it."

She rolls her eyes up to the tangle of green and spindly braids above them, to the pollen strolling through the air like they're putting up a parade. She can barely see the ocean blue sky up above them. There isn't a cloud to see for miles around. Tom studies the varying shades of brown in her eyes while she studies the wonders of summer.

At last, she says, "I promise I'm yours, Tom."

He flashes a perfect, brilliant white smile at her. He's so handsome it hurts. Hermione flushes and wishes that she could be prettier for him, that she could look less utterly average next to him. Tom sighs and catches one of the little white fairies tap-dancing toward them, snapping two dexterous fingers around the darling thing and holding it out to her. She takes the pollen tuft carefully.

"I love you," he whispers in her ear. "More than anything else. And one day, I'll marry you and we'll have a big house and kids and be happier than hell, Hermione." He slips the ring he always wears, the one that belonged to his long-dead grandfather, onto her prim finger. He kisses her cheek.

"Maybe," Hermione says, smiling.

She lets go of the white fairy and Tom picks up his sketchbook, propping it on her raised knees and reaching around her to draw the meadow they sit in. He keeps his chin on her shoulder, breathing steadily. She watches the paper easily come to life under his hands. She sees the world through his eyes in the only way she knows how.

In his pictures.

A while later, Tom gently shakes her, and Hermione opens her eyes with a startled jerk. She looks around, bewildered to see their meadow washed dark blue with dusk. "It's time to go back," he says. He's made four sketches while she slept.

She rubs her still-waking eyes. "Did the others already start to go?"

"Not yet. But they're about to."

She nods and moves to her feet, waiting for him and linking their hands when he stands. They move in and out of the trees. She, stumbling over branches and twigs like an uncoordinated half-giant. Tom, moving swiftly as a wolf with night vision. She's envious of his grace.

Tom catches her looking and grins. "I drew you while you slept," he says randomly.

Hermione blinks. "You did?"

He hums.

"Can I see?" she asks, curiously.

Tom smirks and shakes his head.

She's affronted. "Why not?"

His face darkens. He's annoyed – whether with his drawing or her, she doesn't know. "I couldn't get your eyes right," he grumbles.

Hermione giggles and he sends her a filthy look, so she shuts up.

She keeps laughing on the inside though.

* * *

The day Tom has to go back to Hogwarts, all the loneliness and melancholy of the months spent without him rushes back to Hermione in a flash. She holds him tight outside of the orphanage. Feels his chest go up and down under her cheek and tries to memorize the rhythm, to match her breaths with his. When she does, she finds they're already in tune. They're perfect for each other.

Neither of them know it.

"You won't even know I'm gone," Tom says, like he always does, and she looks up to find him smiling at her. She can't smile back. She doesn't want to go back to being the social outcast.

"I don't want you to go." Hermione feels her ringed hand inside his, small and safe. Tom lifts his other hand and cups her cheek, giving her a kiss. She can feel his happiness. His happiness at getting to go back to Hogwarts, to all his friends and the teachers who adore him. At the knowledge she'll miss him and that she'll be miserable without him here. He loves it when she misses him. He'll never admit it, but she knows this is what he really loves about her.

How much _she _loves _him_.

* * *

_London, England_  
_the winter of 1941_

It's the coldest it's ever been out there.

Hermione stares out the frosted pane at the street beyond the orphanage's eating hall, beyond the barb-wire fence guarding them, at a concrete road coated in a slick sheet of ice without a soul on it. No one would dare go out in this weather. It's dangerous. It's ruthless. It's Christmas.

But Christmas hasn't brought Hermione anything good in years.

She tugs at a loose thread on the drab grey tunic she wears. Her birthday was in September, so she's fifteen now. Tom will be sixteen in less than a week. The only difference between this uniform and last year's is that the pant legs are half an inch shorter, she reflects. With the war in full blast, there isn't any money to be spared for an orphan's wardrobe. For anything besides weapons and tanks.

_People don't have enough money to buy bread these days, much less enough to go to a pricey dentist to have their teeth checked. _Someone once said that to Hermione. Who was it? she wonders.

The double doors to the clean but dreary cafeteria suddenly swing open and she looks up – the only kid who does – and she sees Mrs. Cole with a tall, pale handsome boy behind her standing in the entrance. Her heart skips a beat. She blinks twice, hardly daring to believe it.

_He's back. _

She stands, a huge smile stretching her lips instantly when Tom glides in. He's wearing the usual garb, but with slightly broader shoulders. His eyes are all wrong though. They crackle and sting a silent storm – one that only she can see. They snap to hers and make her smile drop.

He's furious.

Tom sits down without a _Happy Christmas, _without a word, without a sound. He glares slowly at the kids around them and she wants to know why he's back so early, what's happened to make him so angry. She knows better than that though. When Tom's like this, it's better not to say anything at all, so she just eats supper and reads the book she brought, _Anna Karenina, _while Tom snaps the pencils filling his pockets to pieces and grinds his teeth. He's good at keeping most of his emotions inside. He's always been good at that.

She can tell he's itching to touch her.

He'll have to wait until their alone though. Part of her is relieved they aren't alone right now.

Because the others give them weird looks when he holds her hand in chapel, when he kisses her eyelashes and puts his chin on her knee. Mrs. Cole hates that they act the same way as they did when they were small children. Touching and holding hands and whispering in each other's ears. She hates Tom's fierce protectiveness of Hermione Granger. He won't even let the matron herself speak to the girl without his direct supervision. He's like a guard dog with a mean bite, wordlessly intimidating, always watching for the smallest sign of a threat.

Most of all, everyone wants to know what it is that Tom Riddle whispers to Hermione Granger. Everyone wants in on the secret.

_There isn't any secret though, _Hermione thinks, pulling away from the tales of Anna and her tangly love endeavors for a moment. _There's nothing at all._

She glances at Tom. Or is there?

She doesn't ask. Tom would never tell anyway.

* * *

Tom hasn't touched a piece of paper in days.

_Something's happened, _Hermione thinks, again and again. She's so worried she gnaws her lip until it's chapped horribly and burns like fire. _Something bad. What's happened, Tom?_

She has to know.

_Kiss. Kiss. _Tom inches his lips up and down the back of her neck while she reads, arms tight as boa constrictors where they coil around her stomach. His legs are folded-up like tree roots and keep her inside, close to him, where she'll never get away. He blows on her skin where he's got it wet with his tongue so he can watch goosebumps spring into visibility. Playing with her gives him satisfaction, especially when he's bored. She tries to ignore this.

_Kiss. Kiiiisss. _

Her eyes flutter. She realizes it, shakes herself, and keeps on reading. But the words slip and slide now.

Just like Tom's lips.

His arms leave her for a moment and there's rustling. Then Tom is back against her, bare-chested and lifting her nightgown so she feels that bareness against her back. Breathing hot in her ear. Sucking her earlobe into his mouth. Hermione's breathing hitches and her eyes roll back. She feels something new, down below. Between her thighs. A little ache.

Tom's hand shoves her book to the floor, comes over her hip, and flips her so they're face-to-face. His eyes demand everything from her. She can feel how much he wants her. Staring at him, Hermione thinks Tom was born wicked.

She stops him before he can reach for her clothes.

"Tom, what's wrong?"

He raises a brow. "Besides the fact you're not naked yet?"

"You're sad." _Tragically sad._ Hermione tentatively traces her thumb along the noble outline of his jaw. He doesn't stop her, so she cups his cheek fully and looks him in the eye. It's like getting to touch a Bengal tiger. It's heart-racing. It's terrifying. "I can tell," she says.

He smirks. "Oh?"

She nods.

Tom's smirk fades. He jerks his head away, because he hates it when she catches him pretending. He hates showing her what he really is. He hates what he really is.

Whatever that is.

"What's happened?" she queries. He doesn't answer, but continues to leer at the ceiling. "Come on, Tom." She pats his cheek, trying for lightness. "You can tell me."

His jaw flexes. "Later," he says, quickly, and Hermione realizes he talks so fast because his voice is rough like sandpaper. Tom hates crying more than anything. He'd never cry in front of her. He'd never let himself look so weak.

"Do you… do you want me to hold you?" she asks.

Tom meets her eyes with swimming black ones that dry the instant he blinks. He's craving her touch and her eyes and he nods stiffly.

They lay down shoulder-to-shoulder. Then Tom – six foot two now and most definitely no longer a virgin – wriggles over and puts his head in the crook between her neck and shoulder, sighing quietly. Wrapping around her like a clingy spider monkey. Mumbling all the misdeeds the world has done him into her ear. Turning into a child for the night. Fitting like a jigsaw piece.

"They expelled me," he finally says hours later, in a cold flat voice that's nothing like Tom Riddle's suave timber. It's the voice of hatred. Tom's fingers skim up and down her spine possessively. Hermione feels the rage inside him quake and roar, large enough to _swallow _the storm.

"How come?" she says curiously.

"This little brat found out I was a scholarship student and decided to tell everyone in the whole bloody school. All my friends…abandoned me." He pauses, and she knows he's going to tell her the real reason he's been banished. The bad thing. "So I had to make her pay, Hermione. She ruined my life."

"Who?"

"Myrtle something. It doesn't matter now though, does it?"

A violent chill goes through her.

Tom pouts. "What are you looking at me like that for? I'm not the bad guy here. _She _turned me in, remember?" His voice drops to a mischievous murmur. "And it's not like Dumbledore could find enough evidence to really blame me. Only enough to get me kicked out."

_How could you, Tom? _Hermione's stomach knots and she searches Tom's dark eyes, but only to find nothing telling there. He hides his secrets too well. "What did you do?" she demands at last, although she thinks she already knows. Flashes of Billy Stubbs and his dead rabbit Babbity whip through her mind in horrible flashes. Her palms sweat.

Tom snickers and rolls on top of her. His eyes glow in the dark like a cat's. Reflecting the city lights outside so they look metallic and flat, like an animal's. He grins slowly, gazing down at her. "Now why would I tell you that, Hermione?"

* * *

As soon as Hermione hears a knock at her window, she jumps up and opens it to see Tom hanging on the eave down below, panting from the climb up and exhausted from the secret job he keeps up at a pawnshop called Borgin & Burkes. He's got a backpack slung over one shoulder. She throws down a hand and he grabs it, scrabbling into her bedroom fast.

He catches his breath for a few minutes once he's in, dropping his backpack on the floor and wiping off sweat. He's grinning. He says, impressively, "I quit."

"Why?" Hermione asks, bewildered.

Tom shrugs. "I made all the money that I wanted to make." He peers out her open window, down at the dark street below, and he takes a deep breath of the crisp night air. It's April. Thus, it's rainier than usual and everything in London is covered in a fine spray of mist just to prove it. Hermione goes up beside Tom when he waves her over. He automatically winds his fingers through hers.

"What's the backpack for?" she says.

"It's got my money in it," Tom replies, "and a few other things."

Hermione nibbles her lip. "Are you ever going to draw again?"

Tom smiles like Peter Pan. "Naturally."

She nods. Secretly relieved. Outwardly, just as nonchalant as he is.

"I need you to do something for me," he says suddenly – softly – and turns to face her. "I need you to make sure Mrs. Cole doesn't leave her office tonight."

"Why?"

"Just do it for me." Tom reaches into his pocket, pushing past pencils and extracting a cig and lighter. He lights up. Hermione turns her head away. She hates the smell of nicotine.

"Will you do it?"

She rolls her eyes. "Of course I will."

Tom looks at her sideways. He's dashing as a black knight in burning armor. He flicks his cig out the window, where it hits a furious passerby down below.

Hermione averts her eyes, looking up at the night sky and stars. "Where are you sneaking out to anyway?"

Tom shrugs. "Around."

She nods.

He's still looking at her. He gives her a hand a tug and keeps tugging until she's up against his side, where he puts his cold hand under the back of her shirt and makes her jump. "You're freezing," she says, surprised. He snickers.

Whispering in her ear, he retorts, "You're hot."

Hermione blushes and he nips the skin under her ear, turning her head toward him so he can kiss her mouth. He opens her lips with his and sweeps his tongue inside, pushing her up against the window sill. She gasps and grabs his shoulders, holding on tight. She prays Tom won't drop her. She moans when Tom firmly rubs his fingers under her skirt.

He smirks. "You're definitely hot here, baby."

Hermione bites her lip and moves against his hand, seeking relief. He laughs and pulls away. Leaving her hanging. Again.

He always does that.

She curses herself for falling for the same trick again.

"Make sure Mrs. Cole doesn't leave her office," Tom tells her again, eyes no longer wicked but serious. Hermione scowls at him.

"Why should I?" she says, cross. He can be such a jerk.

Tom pouts at her. _Blast, _Hermione thinks, because he's got his angel eyes on and she can feel her anger melting like hot butter already. Bloody angel eyes…

"Please?" he sings. "For me?"

She's going to regret this. She just knows it.

"Oh whatever." Hermione huffs and gets up, walking over to the door so she can sneak out to the matron's office. Tom catches a lock of her hair, stopping her before she can get too far.

Hermione looks back at him, irritated. "What?"

Tom blinks innocently. "I only wanted another kiss." He steps closer and she can see the tiny smirk that's curling his perfect mouth, that's hidden behind his cherubic façade. She doesn't react when he pecks her lips. "Kiss me back," he commands.

"No."

Tom grins. "Come on. You know you want to." He weaves his fingers through her hair and hums into her mouth, tickling it.

Hermione yanks herself away. "Stop it, Tom," she snaps.

He rolls his eyes. "Whatever. It's not like there aren't other willing parties," he says, and this last comment is a blow that hits her hard. She stares at Tom, anger replaced by stunned hurt.

"You…you wouldn't." She tries to smile, like it's a joke, but fails miserably. She searches his cold eyes. "You wouldn't cheat on me."

Tom's brows rise. "Cheat on you?" he repeats, amused. "How can I cheat on you? We're not even together."

Hermione stops breathing. The ring on her finger burns like flaming coals.

"I…" She clears her throat, because her voice is cracking. She looks away quickly. Tom is just saying this because he wants to hurt her. She's seen him do it to other people. She knows him. She knows how he is.

But it still stings.

"I'm gonna go," she finally says.

Tom snorts. "Go? Go where? I didn't say you could go anywhere."

Hermione makes to walk past him, blinking her stinging eyes rapidly, but he snatches her back. He grabs her chin and his beautiful face is in hers, twisted with fury. "_Don't walk away from me," _he hisses.

She glares at him through angry tears. "Let me go."

"No."

"Let me go, Tom!" she shouts and his eyes go wide, darting to the door and back to her.

"Be quiet-"

"No, not until you get off me, you pompous idiot-"

Tom sneers and clamps his hand over her mouth to shut her up. She keeps on yelling into his palm, throwing punches at him that he deflects effortlessly. He pulls her into him, pinning her arms between his hard body and her soft one, muffling her enraged screams. He stares at her with those cold eyes, jaw taut and temper thin like a fraying cord. At that moment, Hermione truly believes he doesn't feel anything at all. He's a monster. Her best friend is a monster and - oh God - does she hate him.

"I'm leaving, Hermione," Tom says quietly. "I can't stay here anymore."

Hermione freezes. She breathes hard and he slowly pulls his hand away, watching her cautiously. She looks down at the floor, at her ratty shoes and their untied laces. Two tears wriggle free and plop onto the dull wooden boards. She sucks in a ragged breath and it comes back out as a sob.

She doesn't know what to feel. Should she be relieved because he's going? Yes, she should. But she's not. She only feels terribly lost and empty.

Seeing her cry, Tom smiles. He smiles because he's gotten to her. He's gotten what he wants. Her pain makes him feel invincible. Hermione looks up and her eyes dry at the sight of his expression, which he quickly schools into a mask of false empathy. But she's already seen how he really feels. What he really is.

Tom touches her wet cheek. Hermione stays still. "You know I love you."

She says nothing.

He pulls her into him, wrapping his long arms around her. Kissing her on the head. "You're sorry, aren't you?" he murmurs. "For making me mad?"

The hairs on Hermione's body are standing on end. She nods slowly and feels hollow inside.

He whispers in her ear. "Now when I kiss you, you'll kiss me back."

* * *

_somewhere in the Atlantic_  
_1947_

_Now when I kiss you, you'll kiss me back._

Hermione launches out of sleep, gasping. Her heart pounds away like a miner's hammer. Sweat drenches her back.

_You'll kiss me back…_

It's the last thing he ever said to her.

She touches her lips. They remember _his. _Tom's lips on hers, though, are nothing but a ghost she wants to forget. Nothing but illusions in pretty, silver-tongued wrapping. Because that night at the orphanage, while she'd sat around watching Mrs. Cole's office door and made sure their matron did not come out, Tom had snuck out with his backpack. And he hadn't come back.

Ever.

Hermione remembers spending the next day worrying herself sick about Tom, wondering if something bad happened to him, feeling helplessly guilty when Mrs. Cole didn't see him in the eating hall or in his bedroom or in the makeshift library and finally went searching for him. Feeling crushed when she heard Mrs. Cole and the other helpers discussing _runaways. _

She'd been betrayed.

She had been used and discarded, like a toy someone had grown bored of.

Tom said he'd come back for her, but he never did. He just took his kiss and left her there, in an orphanage where no one talked to her and kids called her _slutfreakSatanicnastywhore _behind her back. She remained there for another three years, until she aged out and found work at Madame Pomfrey's. It's been six years since she's seen him.

_I don't miss him, _Hermione reminds herself fiercely. _I have no reason to miss someone like that._

She shakes herself of these haunts, pulls her hair back into a ponytail, and stands up in the swaying cabin. The ship she's on raises and bows over the rocky waves recklessly. She's leaving England and all her bad memories with it. She's said her goodbyes to the Dursleys (who were very much relieved to be rid of her, naturally) and she's bought a one-way ticket to her new home.

She has no idea how she's going to go on from here.

But there's a promise in the place she's headed. It lies in a mysterious host, a customer of Madame Pomfrey's former shop who lives overseas and was informed of Hermione's struggles by her once-boss. Madame Pomfrey, through letters, has assured Hermione that this host – a Mr. Malfoy – is very generous and more than happy to let her stay at his home until she can get back on her feet. So now all Hermione's hopes rest on the address Madame Pomfrey has given her.

She peers out of the foggy window, wiping away the condensation to examine what lies outside. It's too dark to see much besides rolling Atlantic and pitch-black depths. The deepness of water terrifies her and she moves away, sea sickness crashing in on her body for the fourth time since she boarded. How close are they? she wonders.

She'll have to wait for morning to find out.

* * *

**AN: Thanks for reading and tell me what you think down below...**

**Muchos love,  
ImmortalObsession**


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: Oh shoot... we're here. Part 2, y'all. Let's do this. (Last night I was on my phone and saw the last date for when I posted on BHC and I was all _da fuq?) _However, Part 2 of BHC took me quite a bit of back-and-forth and deleting and revising just to delete again before I could really get the writing going; so I apologize for the extended waits between updates. I was just battling Creative Rage heh. **

**Now for your lovely reviews (ily!), some general responses from me to y'all...**

**Ahem. The majority rules for Tom Riddle ass-kicking and jealous!Tom. Both notions appeal to my masochistic side and that's all I can say on the matter, cos spoilers aren't my thing. *movin on* **

**There are predictions of a new love interest for Hermione floating around. Am I sensing some Malfoy love out there? B/c I felt Draco vibes from a few of you... :D ****Thank you so much for your sweet reviews; I don't want to be a cornball or anything but I really treasure every one of them. Feedback is the best praise a writer could ever get. **

**Aw shiz, too many feels right now - just go read already.**

* * *

Part 2 - the Starving Artist

"_Many of the pictures I painted were not beautiful.  
For what, then? For a truth I did not know how to put into words.  
For a truth I could only bring to life by means of color and line and texture and form,"  
_Chaim Potok, _My Name is Asher Lev_

* * *

_1947_  
_New York, New York_

She's here.

She's _actually _here. In the Big Apple. New York. Manhattan.

It's nerve-wracking.

Hermione looks out the windshield of the swanky car she's riding in, at the fringe of pine trees and tower-like iron gates guarding an even bigger mansion behind them. They're on Long Island, in a neighborhood where houses are the size of the Chrysler building and lawns wide as Big Ben is tall separate old money families into neat little rows. She can't believe she's going to be living here.

Somebody from the other side sees them coming and opens the gates, which part backward in slow, graceful sweeps. She's so rattled her hands are shaking. She sticks them in her pockets to hide it. The mansion is roaring rich-gorgeous.

The driver comes around to let her out. Hermione sends him a tentative, jittery smile and steps onto the walk. The grounds are lush green and peppered with austere lawn ornaments, marble statues and fountains and a long dock far off that overlooks the glittering blue bay. There's a pool in the back. The mansion – no, not mansion; _castle _– is all bleach-white and stone entablatures and French doors. Butlers and maids flutter everywhere, like insect netting caught in the breeze.

_How much money does this guy have? _she wonders.

The front doors open before them. And it's time to find out.

Someone, somewhere, is playing the pipe organ. The music of it swells and echoes through the castle-like manor. Pipe organ is usually heard in church, but whoever plays it now doesn't make Hermione feel like she's in Sunday service. Better yet, she feels like she's stepped into the heart of a theater, a stage set ready for the play to begin.

But that's just paranoia talking, surely.

Surely?

The butler escorting her doesn't say a word. Hermione looks around, at the art spread throughout the mansion in gilded frames taller than her height times two and heavier than cargo boat anchors. She sees collector's items, abstract sculptures, wooden African masks, Mexican alebrijes propped up on shelves, teardrop-crystal chandeliers hanging from domed ceilings and photographs of places she's never even heard of. She doesn't see any pictures of people. No portraits of Mr. Malfoy. No family either, as far as she can tell.

But she's read about her new host. He's got family, stinking rich family who are bred to work the world of business and strike gold easy. Mr. Malfoy himself works on Wall Street, specializing in bonds with a business degree from Oxford under his belt.

Hermione wonders what Mr. Malfoy is like.

"Here you are, Miss Wilkins," says the butler, speaking for the first time since she's arrived. And getting her name wrong. His voice is rather croaky, thin hair graying, and he wears fine white gloves, as if he's just popped out of an Emily Brontë novel. He puts her trunk on the floor. "If you require anything, just let one of the help know and they'll retrieve it for you immediately. Mr. Malfoy has taken the liberty to purchase you a wardrobe. It is in that closet there." He points. Hermione, stunned, looks where he indicates to see a door leading to who-knows-what. _That's… gracious, _she thinks.

Finished, the butler bows stiffly in goodbye, but before he can leave she speaks up.

"Um, excuse me, but where exactly…" She hesitates. "I mean, where is Mr. Malfoy?"

The butler blinks at her blankly. He's clearly offended that she doesn't know already. He says, croaky voice laced with thinly veiled disdain, "In the city, of course, Miss-"

"Granger," she quickly supplies.

He nods. "Mr. Malfoy is there on business."

_On business. _Hermione thinks this is a reasonable answer and nods. She'll have to thank Mr. Malfoy for his hospitality later.

"Will that be all, Miss Granger?" the butler says, reminding her of his presence. Hermione is startled by the request. It's odd to be waited on, beck and call…

"No, I'm alright," she says awkwardly. "Um, thank you, Mr..."

"Kreacher," the froggish butler sneers.

"Yes, thank you, Mr. Kreacher." She smiles quickly, uncertainly. The butler barely makes an effort to hide his revulsion at her fumbling and makes his departure with a loathing grumble.

_It's so big. _Hermione looks around at the grand room he's left her in. Her new bedroom. It's a polished paradise of some sort, with gleaming hardwood floors, creamy peach-colored furniture and a balcony offering a flawless view of West Egg and the city skyline. She can still hear the pipe organ player electrifying the halls of Malfoy's mansion.

This is nothing like any place she's lived in before. Not like the cellar the Dursleys let her stay in, not like the orphanage where…

She shakes off that last thought.

Hermione sits down and curls her hands around a cup of green tea one of the maids has brought her, warming them. She's cold despite the summer heat pervading this place. She's exhausted after the trip here. She's going to need to convert her money tomorrow morning. She'll have to find Malfoy later, she thinks again, to thank him for letting her stay here.

_Why did he buy me clothes? Why has he even invited me here? He's just a stranger._

She writes it off as excessive kindness. Madame Pomfrey _did _say that Mr. Malfoy is an extremely generous man. She meditatively sips the green tea. It doesn't help the queasy flip-flopping in her belly though.

She closes her eyes. Fresh start, she reminds herself. _Fresh start._

* * *

A week goes by, and another and another. Hermione doesn't find Malfoy the first two nights of her stay, and soon after, she abandons this task to look for work. She forgets about her quest to track down the mysteriously absent host in her search for it.

But the States don't seem to be the American Dream they're all chalked up to be.

_Nobody wants to hire a woman in this century. _Hermione scowls at the dinner set before her, pushing the delicious contents around on her plate and making a mess of them. She's dissatisfied. She'd had higher hopes when she first came here. Those hopes, however, are already burning out like flames in a dying candelabra.

Malfoy won't let her stay in his house forever.

_There has to be work somewhere, _she thinks. _Things have to get better._

She sighs.

Lost in thought, Hermione mulls over Malfoy – Abraxas Malfoy, as she's discovered with the help's assistance – and she wonders why she never sees him. His staff say it is because he's a business man and as such is always in the city or in his office, making important phone calls, going to meetings, et cetera. He can't be disturbed. He returns to his mansion long after she falls asleep.

He could be a ghost for all she knows.

She's lost her appetite. Hermione shoves back her plate, stands, and looks around at the austere yet elaborate interior she has slowly grown accustomed to over the few weeks she's been here. And her heart stops.

Because just behind the doorway, two _eyes _are staring at her.

She blinks – and they're gone.

_Abraxas Malfoy. _She knows it's him. But why was he watching her? Why didn't he come in and introduce himself? Moreover…how long did he stand there in the darkness, staring? She frowns and touches her cheek.

She's blushing furiously.

* * *

It's been one whole month that she's lived in Malfoy's mansion. Hermione can't find work. She finds herself thinking back to the night in the dining room, when she caught Mr. Malfoy eerily watching her as she ate dinner. Mr. Malfoy who bought an entire wardrobe for her – a wardrobe that's worth thousands and thousands of dollars – and who lets her stay at his million-dollar mansion out of the kindness of his heart. He even purchased a typewriter for her when she mentioned to a servant that she wishes she could spend her weekends writing, but that she'd been running out of notebooks and kept drying out all her pens.

He'd disappeared too fast for her to say hello.

She is sure Malfoy is avoiding her now. She muses the possibility of his being a shut-in. Perhaps he is some sort of introverted hermit who hides behind his staff and fancies studying people's eating habits…? No, that doesn't make sense. He can't possibly make as much money as he does from home.

She must find Mr. Malfoy then. And confront him.

So late at night on a slow Saturday, she sets out.

As luck will have it, however, Malfoy's mansion is even larger than she originally thought it to be. It's vast and labyrinth-like, with never-ending halls and misleading footsteps that could be a cook or stray servant just as easily as it could be her enigmatic host. Hermione spends the entire night trailing around aimlessly, trying to find the office Malfoy apparently works in, to find _him. _But she doesn't reveal a shred of evidence that proves he even exists.

Long after midnight, she returns to bed – plush and splendid with goose-down pillows and silk duvet – but she's wary. She wears the velvet pyjama set supplied to her by Mr. Malfoy and it makes her skin itch, her resolve solidify. She must leave. It's not safe here.

Something isn't right here.

* * *

Kreacher, who Hermione has always thought hated her with all his amphibian-ish guts, is strangely agitated when she tells him of her plans. He persuades her to sit down and wait while he informs 'the master of the house' of her departure. She reluctantly agrees.

Some fifteen minutes later, Kreacher returns, hopping in fast and looking anxious. His relief at finding she hasn't left yet is extremely apparent. "M-M-Mr. Malfoy," he croaks pathetically, "implores you to stay. He apologizes that your schedules conflict so, but he would hate to see you on the streets-"

"Those are his words exactly?"

"Yes."

"Then no." Hermione stands, taking up her trunk again. Kreacher gives a rather displeased ribbit at the sight. "If he won't see me, I can't stay here anymore. I'm sorry, Mr. Kreacher. I just don't feel comfortable…"

"Blah!" Mr. Kreacher is so wretched that Hermione would not be surprised at all if he suddenly started to attempt a butchering of himself by the aid of a nearby lamp. But instead he slaps his bald head and says, quickly, "Wait, wait a moment, Miss Granger. Just one moment."

Hermione hesitates.

Kreacher smiles widely – she's never seen him smile before, she realizes, and it's a wink scary – when she agrees and he hops off again, hobbling away in a hurry. She sighs.

Another number of minutes later, he returns.

"Mr. Malfoy agrees to meet with you," Kreacher gasps. He's about to keel over from exertion. "In two days' time, you two will dine at the-"

"Two days?" she says skeptically. Kreacher's greyish features twist in displeasure at the interruption. "That's an awfully long wait."

"Mr. Malfoy is a very busy man, Miss Granger. Surely, you can understand that."

She bites her lip. And although a part of her tells her to get out of there now, to not give this fishy bait a chance, another part of her calls her _coward _and makes her stay. And then there is another thought, a thought that fears _he _might see her with someone else, that _he _might – just _might_ – be the one watching…

These last musings are ridiculous however.

"Alright, two days." Hermione is firm. She's leaving the past behind her – or trying to.

Kreacher croaks in relief.

* * *

He's not what she expected.

He's not warm. Or kind. Or gracious or generous or charismatic or any of the things Madame Pomfrey has said he is.

He's completely average actually. And a bit of a big, fat snob.

All in all, he's disappointing.

"I trust that everything is to your liking, Miss Granger?" Malfoy says, after a pregnant pause in which he thinks very hard and squints at the silk napkin in his lap like he's looking for a secret code to be disguised there. Hermione confirms this. Malfoy goes back to the napkin squinting business.

"And…ah…you are content?" he asks.

"Yes, quite." Hermione frowns at the oddly phrased question, but shakes it off. She needs to be gracious. "Thank you, by the way, Mr. Malfoy. I appreciate your hospitality very much in allowing me to stay at your home. I promise I'll be out of your hair by next month-"

"No, no!" shouts Malfoy, astonishing her. It's the first time he's shown any emotion beside Stuck-Up Robot. His white-blonde hair looks even paler against his suddenly flushed face. "That's quite unnecessary. I mean, you're welcome to stay as long as you want, Miss Granger," he adds hastily.

"Oh, um… thank you?"

It's very awkward after that.

"So." She scrambles for a conversation topic. "You are very busy with your meetings?"

"Yes. Er, quite busy." He squints at his toilette again. He seems agitated, but he's trying to hide it. Hermione's eyes narrow.

_He's faking. Someone's putting him up to this. _She's not sure how she knows it, but she does. She doesn't know what the purpose of this pretending is, but she knows there is one. She can see this Abraxas Malfoy is a liar – and a very poor one at that.

"Thank you for lunch, it was lovely," she says pleasantly when the luncheon is finally over. "I'm sorry to have imposed on your time, Mr. Malfoy. I know how very busy you are…" she trails.

Malfoy looks away. "Er, yes. Well, it's not really any trouble. Your company is…enjoyable." He's lying through his teeth.

"And yours." She smiles. "Goodbye, Mr. Malfoy. Maybe I will see you at your home again?"

_Again. _It's a test. Because if he's really the man who owns the house she's currently staying in, who has bought her a wardrobe of clothes and whose watched her dine once upon a Thursday night, then her comment will fluster him. She watches closely.

But Malfoy only pastes on a false cheery smile.

"Yes. Maybe." And he stands, quickly shaking her hand and parting with obvious relief. She watches him leave the restaurant.

She's being scammed.

Because this Mr. Malfoy is most certainly not her host and her real host is most certainly not at all what he seems to be. So what's the purpose of all this? Why the theatrics, the unnecessary lies? The mystery? Who is the real Mr. Malfoy?

She doesn't know, but she intends to find out.

* * *

**AN: Awh mans, I know: no Tom Riddle this chapter. It's killing me slowly. ****He's MIA (...for now).**

**Thoughts? Concerns? Prophecies of what is to come next? I might be able to get to the library again in a few days, so just hold onto your pants for a little while. :) **

**Kisses,  
ImmortalObsession **


	7. Chapter 7

**AN: Once again... you are all supertabulously _bitchin_! Tom is dying to turn his angel eyes on all of your susceptible hearts. And I got to the library. Soooooo that's two wins in one Monday. *victory donut***

**Thank you all for your kind words; they really keep my going. And your suggestions/speculations are awesome (and more often than not making me literally rofl). **

**To _yo, _Tom isn't borderline. He is actually a full-fledged narcissist, NPD and all. It's a very real disorder and many people come by emotional/physical harm by affiliation with these narcissists. My best friend's mom is one and her whole family is hurting because of it. As for your situation, I don't know who this person is that's "controlling" you, but it's possible they have NPD or something else entirely. Obviously, I'm not an expert, but I hope everything works out for the best for you. Don't let this person get you down. Those who like to play "high and mighty" prey on weakness.**

***ahem* Aside from my Oprah Winfrey moment... enjoy the chapter. :)**

* * *

Hermione puts down _the Times_, letting loose a soft yawn. The work selections aren't promising, but she'll apply to them all anyway. She's sick of being useless, of sitting around in a mansion with nothing to do or occupy her time with. She goes out to the balcony and studies the Hudson River, wide and black-blue and threatening. The New York City skyline is a beautiful congested backdrop against it.

"_Hello_?" a voice says.

At the interruption, she straightens and turns around, surprised to see her bedroom empty and the door shut. She frowns. _Who said-? _

"Yes_, _this is he," that same voice says and she realizes it's coming from above her, from the balcony just a level up where a figure strides back and forth across the floor. She can see their feet pacing through the mahogany slots. The underside of shiny, buffed shoes gleam in the channeled sunlight at her. _It's him, _she thinks._ The real Malfoy._

"…Coming along," her mysterious host is saying as he strides back inside. To his office perhaps? "…be ready in at least four days…"

Hermione waits where she stands frozen on the balcony, hoping he'll come back. But he doesn't.

_I know where his office is now. _The new knowledge gives her an idea. Maybe – _maybe _– she can go up there tonight, when her host isn't here. Maybe she can find out who he (it's definitely a he) is and why he won't show himself. Maybe she can find out why he's so keen on keeping his identity secret, so much that he's got his staff lying straight to her face about him. There has to be something in that office.

Hermione goes back inside her grand, pretty bedroom and touches the brand-new typewriter on her desk. It's gleaming black and silver. It still has a fat red bow on it, since she hasn't even used it yet. She won't until she finds out who really bought it for her.

She just won't.

* * *

It's ten minutes past one AM when Hermione finally finds it.

She smiles to herself, thrilled at this small victory, and checks the corridor twice before stepping up to her unknown host's office. The door is shut, maybe locked even, but she has a pin in her pocket. She knows how to undo locks. She read a book on it.

Hermione takes a deep breath and crouches, lifting her homemade gadget. But just as she presses it to the knob, the door slowly swings open.

Someone didn't close it all the way.

She frowns, hardly able to believe she's just this lucky, but peers inside anyway. The office – shockingly – isn't an office at all, she finds. It's a studio. An art studio.

Hermione straightens and walks inside soundlessly, shutting the door behind her and twisting the lock on it. She looks around, taking in the paint-splattered walls and un-stretched canvases, the emptied oil tubes, half-complete pictures, the door leading to a kiln and another to the balcony. A tattered sketchbook lying off to the side pushes unwelcome memories at her, but she doesn't dwell on it. The studio feels supernaturally familiar enough without an extra dose of paranoia, despite the fact she's never stepped foot in here before.

She shivers.

Focusing, Hermione starts her search. She'd previously thought it would be easy to find dirt on this host of hers, that she'd just fling open a filing cabinet and somehow stumble upon his birth certificate or something. She sees how stupid this idea is now. Because there aren't any papers in here – none except for the ones in sketchbooks – and there isn't anything to allude to a person's identity either. She huffs and sits down on a cardboard box of terracotta clay, stumped.

It is now that she remembers what all artists do to their work with a burst of revelation…

_They sign it._

She spins around, looking about at the pieces splayed haphazardly throughout the room and searching for a complete one, one that the artist would have signed already. She finds a huge oil on canvas propped on an easel. It's an abstract painting of triangles and squares she can't even begin to see the meaning behind – but then, she's never understood art. She's a bookworm, not an art junkie.

She looks down, to the bottom right corner, and sees a name scribbled in black ballpoint pen there. _Voldemort, _it reads.

Who the devil is Voldemort?

On the opposite side of the studio, the balcony doors rattle sharply, like the hammers of hell are trying to smash their way inside. Hermione jumps a foot into the air at the sound. She looks outside, heart pounding, but it's only a summer lightning storm. The Hudson is swirling and churning, the grey air humming above it rocked with electricity.

_Calm down, _she tells herself, even as cruel terror threatens a lunar eclipse. _It's just the weather. Just a little rain._

Surely.

Hermione looks away and back at the signature. _Voldemort. _She traces the letter ridges with the tip of her forefinger. She's never heard of him. And yet, there's _something _about_…_

The balcony doors rattle again, at the same time lightning strikes the river, but this time they tear open wide. Hermione swears when a gust of blistering wind tears inside the studio, sending everything askew and toppling works of art upward and wayward and here and there without a care in the world. She scrambles to her feet, running over to grab the doors, forcing them shut and pulling the lock fast. Papers flutter to the floor gently behind her.

She turns around, blanching at the mess. Her eyes catch on an envelope.

She knows she shouldn't.

Reading other people's mail is a crime...

But the curiosity is just _too_ _strong_, damn it.

She goes over, picking up the envelope and examining it. It's already been opened and there's only the return address on the front; it's from some place in California. She takes out the letter.

_Voldemort,  
Thank you sincerely for your creations. My sister is thrilled with her portrait and I hope you are thrilled with your side of the bargain also. Is the locket to your liking? If it is not, do not even think of trying to send it back – I am hardpressed to ever relinquish one of your fine pieces in exchange. I do love them so.  
On another note, I am flying in from Lahoya just to come to your art show, come July._

_Until then,  
Hepzibah Smith _

Hepzibah Smith? Hermione has heard of her. She is a famous art collector, notorious for her habits of snatching up the famous and beautiful no matter what the price may be. Her money knows no bounds.

Apparently, she's a fan of Voldemort as well.

_July. _That's just a week away. She lowers the envelope and speculates, wondering how she can find the exact details of Voldemort's art show and how she can meet him there. He will be there doubtlessly. It _is _his art show, after all…

She pockets the letter.

* * *

_July 1st 1947_  
_downtown Brooklyn, New York_

The art show is, in all meanings and synonyms and translations of the word, _posh. _

The lighting is low, a jazz band plays its music soft from a shady corner, and rich oak floors and paneling strike sharp contrast with the pieces mounted onto them. Hermione does not dwindle on the art. Incredible as they are, they don't interest her. Only their maker does.

_Voldemort_.

Where is he?

Hermione asks the strangers, the extravagantly dressed wives and paparazzi snapping away their clunky cameras and the suave critics in embroidered scarves and sharp jackets. Some laugh at her question, like she's made a funny joke. Others scoff and sneer at her – but most of them simply say they don't know. Most don't even know what Voldemort looks like.

She sighs, frustrated. This is proving to be a tedious task indeed.

It's two-thirty when Hermione sees - at last! - a familiar face. For stalking in the dimly-lit corner of the showroom is no one other than…

_Malfoy. _

Hermione tucks a stray curl back behind her ear nervously (though it just stubbornly comes undone again) and she gathers herself, walking over to the man. She tries to talk herself into being assertive – tough. There's information she needs, and nothing shall stop her from getting it. She draws back her shoulders and jabs Malfoy harshly in the back, to which the man turns around with a heavy scowl.

Seeing her, his scowl is replaced by a look of horror.

"What are _you _doing here?" he says, aghast.

Hermione blinks. Her cheeks tinge red with embarrassment. _There goes the 'assertive' plan,_ she thinks glumly."What do you mean what am I doing here?" she asks.

Malfoy cast a paranoid look about them, then clamps a hand down on her shoulder and pulls them swiftly into a pool of shadow where they're hidden. She quickly shakes off his hand, her heart skipping a creeped beat at the unexpected touch. In the dark, Malfoy hisses, "You better get out of here before he sees you-"

"_He?" _She narrows her eyes and stabs a finger at Malfoy's chest, declaring, "You mean Voldemort, don't you?"

Malfoy's eyes widen as he realizes his mistake. He flushes, which makes his strange colorless hair seem even brighter than before, and he mutters, "Er… who's Voldemort?"

Hermione snorts. "Nice try. But that's _my _question, actually." She stares at him suspiciously. "And what did you mean by 'get out of here before he sees you'?"

"Look, it doesn't matter what I meant – and I'm not saying that you're right either. What matters is that you _scram_."

"I'm not going anywhere." Her heart is racing from all her daring. She lifts her chin, looking Malfoy directly in the eye. "Not until you tell me what's going on."

Malfoy scowls irritably. "Fine. Stay then, because I'm not telling you a thing. I'm not crazy enough to value your life over my own." And he stomps away, swearing and skulking. Hermione hurries after him.

"Wait!" she says quickly.

Malfoy shows her a choice finger.

"Look, you don't have to tell me everything," she wagers, catching up. "Just tell me a few things."

"I don't think so."

"Why not?" she demands, offended.

Malfoy sends her a quick, frigid smile. It's not becoming at all. "Because I've been told not to."

"By Voldemort?"

He pointedly ignores that.

"Ok, fine. Don't tell me." Hermione takes a deep breath. "I just- I don't understand what the big deal is. Is he anti-social or something? Is he shy? Is that why he doesn't want me to know about him?"

Malfoy barks out a harsh laugh at _shy. _"He's anything but that, Miss Granger, I assure you. He's quite adamant to meet you actually."

"Voldemort?"

Malfoy nods, then freezes midway and glares at her poisonously. She smiles back.

"So," she says innocently. "What are all the…theatrics…for?"

"Hell if I know." Malfoy sighs. "I just manage his finances."

She mulls over that.

Malfoy glances over at her and stops, as if considering something. Slowly, he says, "If you want a bit of advice, however… I'd suggest that you pack your bags as soon as you get back to that big house you're staying in. And leave. Immediately."

She laughs, but instead of coming off as nonchalant and unconcerned, she sounds nervous. Because how can she leave when there's nowhere to go? "You think I should run away?"

"I don't think you should, _I know _you should." Malfoy receives his jacket and hat from the coat check. Donning both, he sends one last unfriendly eye-muster at her. "If I see you again, you'll be a stupid fool, Miss Granger," he says matter-of-factly. "If I don't, you're one of the few smart ones."

And he leaves.

_Great, _Hermione thinks, frowning as she watches the blonde go. _Now I know even less about this Voldemort than I did before. _

She makes to leave, but before she can there's a voice at her ear, a man extending a hand to her with a secret smile. She regards that hand warily.

"Cygnus Black," the man introduces. He drops his hand when she doesn't shake it. He doesn't look insulted though. Just smooth. "I assume you are Miss Granger?"

"Yes." Hermione eyes him untrustingly. "How do you know that?"

"Everyone here knows who you are." Cygnus leans closer, smile gone fox-like, and whispers, "They just don't know it yet."

She raises a brow.

"Anyway." Cygnus leans back, cracking his knuckles in a way that makes her cringe. He has brown curly hair. "I was eavesdropping on your conversation with Mr. Malfoy there and I couldn't help but notice you've a little dilemma."

"Oh?" she says. "And what is that?"

"Voldemort." Cygnus evaluates her, with dark brown eyes that could have seen guns fired at innocents as easily as they could have seen the moment in which they could have stopped the trigger from being pulled. He has the gaze of a bluffer, Hermione thinks. "Do you want to meet him?"

"Yes." She's surprised, but her answer has no doubts. She tilts her head. "You know where he is?"

"Of course." Cygnus rubs his jaw, slightly scruffy with a five o' clock shadow. It gives his attractive looks a rough edge. "I run the shows here all the time, Miss Granger – and besides, everyone knows. Most of them just don't know it yet."

Hermione frowns. Before she can ask what the devil he means by that, however, Cygnus is already walking away, gesturing for her to follow and disappearing through the revolving brass-gold doors in a flash. Reluctantly, she goes after him.

_Art people_. Why do they always have to be so god-damn dramatic?

"So how do you know Voldemort?" she asks, while they sit on the subway chugging them through the tunnels webbing the city underground. The train is cramped and sweaty. Cygnus impatiently drums his fingers on the steel safety pole he's gripping. Hermione wishes that she'd put on one of the dresses in her closet when a bead of sweat dribbles from her damp hairline and onto her lip.

_The dresses that fit me like a glove and are all varying shades of purple_. The dresses that give her unexplainable goosebumps every time she looks at them.

"I'm a friend from his school days," Cygnus answers briefly, pulling her out of her thoughts. She looks up.

"What school did you go to?"

He grins slowly. "You know already...you just don't know it yet."

Hermione purses her lips at this living paradox. "You know, you're quite annoying, Mr. Black."

"Call me Cyg."

The subway suddenly squeals to the eighth stop and when the doors slide open this time, Cygnus stands. She stands, too, listening to the intercom to see where they are and congregating with the crowd onto the platform outside. Cygnus finds her amidst the faces and waves, indicating for her to come over. She struggles through the hot mass to him.

"What are we– or what is _Voldemort_, I mean – doing in Queens?" she queries.

"Waiting."

"For?" she prompts impatiently.

"Meh, one second." Cygnus fumbles to light a cigarette as they ascend the metal stairs leading to higher ground and he offers one to her, wriggling the box. She shakes her head.

"I don't like the smell of nicotine," she finds herself explaining.

"Oh, ok." Cygnus takes one quick drag of his cig and drops the rest, kicking it into a grate that rumbles from the subway roaring on rusty tracks beneath them. He coughs. "So what did you say?"

"I asked what Voldemort is waiting for."

"Ah, that's an easy one." He shoots her a teasing smile. "You sure you can't figure it out on your own, honey bunch?"

She grits her teeth, growing irritated at the nickname. "Would you just tell me already-?"

"Ok, ok, relax." Cygnus ignores her witch glare and walks on obliviously, guiding them through a shabby neighborhood with broken streetlights and shifty eyes lurking in the alleyways – or maybe that last part is just her imagination. Either way, Hermione steps closer to her newfound companion on instinct. "He's waiting for you, actually. And so are the others."

"_What_?" And what of others? What is he talking about?

Patiently, Cygnus repeats, "Voldemort is waiting for you-"

"No, I heard that part." She stares ahead of them, trying to figure out where they're going. What are they doing in a neighborhood? she wonders. "But why? What's going on?"

"Beats me." Cygnus, it seems, is just as unhelpfully unknowing as Malfoy. It is this fact that makes her all the more determined to find out what is going on.

He stops them at an herbal shop called _Snape's Specialities _and sweeps his arm out in an ironically gentlemanly fashion, holding open the door. "Ladies first, ma'am," he says in a Southern drawl.

_If I see you again, you'll be a stupid fool, Miss Granger. If I don't, you're one of the few smart ones._

Hermione is many things, but 'a stupid fool' is not one of them. Curious, sometimes rash and quite stubborn might fit the bill, but stupid and fool most certainly do not. She is only tired of running away from her problems. She is only determined to be the first to confront the bully for once in her life.

_New York must be getting to me, _she thinks drily, going into the shop.

The herbal shop is a nasal assault of tea leaves, incense, what may or may not be pot and a number of other strange stinky objects that sting her eyeballs. A bell overhead rings at their entrance. She discreetly fans the air in front of her nose, coughing.

"Don't worry, it gets better," Cygnus assures. But his eyes water.

"Voldemort is in here?" she sneezes incredulously.

He scoffs. "Don't be silly! He's under here, at the Fat Lady's."

_Under? _Hermione frowns and begins to say, "What's the Fat Lady?" But she's cut short by the arrival of a tall bat.

Except it's not really a bat. It's a man, dressed like a bat in black ensemble, with greasy hair and oily-black eyes. He steps out of an _employees only _door and regards them with the expression someone wears when they find a half-dead, twitching cockroach in their French fries.

All in all, he doesn't look pleased to see them.

"Mr. Black, what are you doing here?" The man, who Hermione assumes is the owner of the shop, looks right over her at Cygnus. His lip curls. "And why, pray tell, did you bring that...unsavory thing into my store?"

She bristles.

"We're here for the Fat Lady, Snape." Cygnus nods at Hermione casually, seemingly unruffled by Snape's pessimistic mood. "She wants to come along."

Severus Snape's eyes shrink into suspicious slits. However, all he does is hold out a hand and wait until Cygnus drops a rather thick wad of cash into his palm. Hermione blinks and squints at it. Are those _twenties? _Before she can figure it out, Snape has whirled around and is striding away to his cash register, carelessly saying, "You know where to go, I presume."

Cygnus nods.

Hermione, feeling much like Alice going down the rabbit hole, goes after Cygnus Black into the _employees only _backroom. The interior isn't very impressive. It's dark, organized but terribly cluttered, and filled with filing cabinets galore. Cygnus goes to the very back and pulls aside a curtain, which reveals a portrait of a rather pudgy woman dressed in Renaissance garb. _The Fat Lady._ With what little art knowledge she has, Hermione gathers that the painting is a Rubens copy.

Cygnus knocks on the door, thrice.

The eyes of the Fat Lady slide aside – it's a slat – to be replaced by two very small, watery blue ones. "Who's there?" a nasally voice says.

"Use your eyes, idiot." Cygnus stares back into the ugly eyes impatiently. "Who does it look like? I'm here every week."

"What is the password?"

"Open the damn door, Wormtail, you little rat crap."

Wormtail's ugly eyes flash with annoyance but he concedes, climbing off of what sounds like a stepstool from the other side. Then the Fat Lady, which turns out to be a secret entrance, swings open backward and reveals a stairway lit by torches... going down into the unknown. Hermione can hear music from below and realizes this must be what Cygnus meant before by _under_.

"What is this, some sort of a club?" she stammers. Cygnus looks amused by her nerves.

"Actually, Voldemort's throwing a party." He steps back. "Go on. I'll be right behind you."

She can only hope he'll keep that promise.

Carefully, cautiously, Hermione steps onto the first stone step. Wormtail, who turns out to be three inches shorter than her and quite rat-like, scowls at her with yellowed buck teeth. She looks away quickly and goes down the stairs faster after that, until she reaches the entrance of a - well - _a party._

She stops on the bottom step, looking around wonderingly. The lights have a strange tint and simmer so low it's hard to see more than one thing at a time. Everyone wears white here, their stylish dresses and suits glowing as they pass under a gleaming bulb, and silver confetti seems to have passed in a rain, because it dresses the floor like a shiny coat and clusters in girls' hair. Hermione's white shoe laces are the only things that glow on her.

Cygnus bumps into her back suddenly, having run right into her. She stumbles. "Keep going," Cygnus tells her, and he has to shout into her ear for her to hear him. "Unless you'd like to stand here and gape at everybody like a stunned fish all day?"

She looks over her shoulder, sends Cygnus a withering glare he sticks his tongue out at, and steps inside. To her right, a crowded bar made of sleek steel offers cyber-green cocktails and petit fours on metallic platters. Cygnus snatches one glass up as they pass, downing it in one fluid movement. Hermione doesn't touch the liquor. She doesn't want to end up like the girl doing a strip-tease on the ninety-something-year old's lap while a group of half-naked guys – or girls maybe? – have a tap dancing contest around them.

"I'll catch up with you later, Hermione," Cygnus shouts over the _swing_, which is smashing out of the orchestra pit. His sly eyes catch on a leggy Indian girl sauntering into a gyrating mass of white wearers and slant. He has the look of a hungry lion prowling in the savannah.

Hermione is worried. "But how am I supposed to find Voldemort? I don't even know what he looks like-"

"Don't worry." He's already walking away. "He arranged all of this just for you. If you don't find him, he'll find..." The remainder of his words are swallowed in the music, in the sensational party. Hermione's eyes widen. Feeling the air beside her go colder, she looks up to see Cygnus stalking after his possible hook-up.

_Fantastic. Now I'm alone (yet again) and hardly any closer to finding Voldemort than I was an hour ago. _Why did she bother with Cygnus? Sure, she doesn't have many leads, but obviously this is a mistake.

Examining her rather frightening surroundings, Hermione smooths her best pants and tip-toes past the dance floor to a hangout in the back, where a small group inhabit a format of sleek ivory furniture and various glass sculptures drip from multiple surfaces like frozen tears. Two obese men who look like bouncers take up one icicle-ish couch and a woman with vivid, bright orange eyeshadow that strangely suits her sits in a see-through chair that looks like a carved out block. Hermione hides out on the empty loveseat.

And although she's the one who set out to find Voldemort, she can't help but feel _he's _the one who has found _her _now_. _Not that he's anywhere in sight.

The woman across from her in the block chair pops neon-colored gum and looks at her over an upside-down magazine called _the Quibbler. _She catches her eye and smiles, alerting Hermione to the white lipstick spread across her pouty lips in generous layers. Apparently, this strange little party has a color code.

"I'm Pansy," the woman says, fluttering her long fingernails in hello. She points at the two bouncer-like men. "That's Crabbe and Goyle. They're my bitches."

Hermione blinks.

"Just kidding." Casting aside the magazine, which hits the wall with a soft slap and ends up in a punchbowl that glows pink-purple, Pansy reaches up and drags a hand of French-tipped nails up her leg provoactively. "You're cute," she continues without an ounce of self-consciousness or the usual engrained social barrier. "I can see why he's so interested in you."

_She means Voldemort. _Somehow, everyone she's met today seems to know about him. Everyone except her that is. But how does Pansy know who she is? Hermione shifts uncomfortably in her seat. "He's… he's spoken of me?"

Pansy nods.

"And he's...interested?"

"_Extremely_."

"But what does that mean?" she says, frustrated. "What is it that exactly-?"

Pansy interrupts her interrogation with a sharp laugh – short and sounding of embedded glass. Slyly, she looks at her through false eyelashes. They're white, too, and frizzy-soft like the plucked feathers of a goose. This woman has most certainly taken the dress code to the extreme. "Why don't you just ask him, Hermione?"

_Because I don't know him. Because I've never met him, although it seems everyone in New York already has. Because I'm not sure I want to know the answer._

"Do you read _the Quibbler?" _Pansy says, cutting Hermione's mental tirade short.

"No."

"Well, I know the editor's daughter Luna Lovegood." She laughs wonderfully. "If you think I'm a sight, you should meet her! I'll introduce you two sometime."

"Um…" Hermione isn't sure what to say. Luckily, she's saved from having to respond when Pansy's eyes catch on something behind her and the woman blinks, getting to her feet at a moment's notice. "Come on, Crabbe, Goyle," she says coolly, but pointedly. "It's time to go."

Crabbe and Goyle immediately climb off the couch – which sighs in relief once released from the burden of them – and they trudge after Pansy as she disappears into the crowd. Just before the white-wearing trenches enclose them, however, Pansy looks back over her shoulder and flutters her fingers at Hermione in goodbye. "_Ciao, _cutie!" she calls.

Hermione waves back.

As she is contemplating the weirdness of this recent experience (and of today's experience as a whole), however, she suddenly becomes aware of the person standing behind her, of the shadow he casts on the bleached granite floor. Of the wide girth of space between this section of the club and…everyone else.

It's Voldemort. It has to be.

But it's not.

Because as she concentrates, she realizes that she _recognizes _this person. There's something about them, about their air, about their silence, that strikes a chord inside her. It strikes fear. It strikes something else too. Something she cannot identify. It's the same supernaturally familiar feeling she felt when she broke into Voldemort's studio.

_The unlocked door. _Did Voldemort plan that, too? Plan leaving the envelope in the hope that she'd find it, that she would come to his art show looking for him? Did he send Cygnus to find her there and bring her to the Fat Lady? What for though? Why didn't he just introduce himself when she first got here? _Why?_

Who would go through such pains to get to her? To get inside her mind and to stick there so fast? To make such a maddeningly intricate plan?

Why get to her at all?

The answer comes suddenly, and it's painfully clear. It's _him. _It's impossible, but it cannot be anyone else. It doesn't make sense, yet it makes perfect sense. Hermione's fingers go rigid where they grip the loveseat, scratching gouges into the baby-soft suede. Tension makes her tongue twist and heart pound.

_He left me. He's found me._

She doesn't understand.

She doesn't want to.

"Hermione," Tom greets in a low murmur, touching the side of her neck with one long cold finger. His touch is cautious, but she can feel the urge he has – the urge he's always had – to touch her just the same. She shivers.

_This can't be real, _she thinks frantically.

But it is.

* * *

**AN: Oh wow, I'm a bitch. :) *go cliffies!***

**Kisses!  
ImmortalObsession**


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